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KmgM  Letter 

THE  LEWIS  CARROLL  ^/SOCIETY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  NUMBER  65  WINTER  2000 


An  Austin-tatiously  Glorious  Time 

Lewis  Carroll  at  Texas?  Why,  there's  even  a  book 
by  that  name!1  Austin  resident  Alan  Tannenbaum,  together 
with  Stephanie  Lovett,  arranged  for  a  spectacular  weekend 
deep  in  the  heart  of  Texas,  centered  around  the  fabulous 
holdings  of  the  University  of  Texas  at  Austin  (UTA). 

On  Friday,  October  27th,  the  festivities  began  with 
the  eighth  Maxine  Schaefer  Memorial  reading  and  book 
distribution  taking  place  in  a  classroom  of  Rodriguez 
Elementary  school  in  southwest  Austin.  About  45  children, 
mostly  of  Hispanic  background,  were  treated  to  a  reading 
of  "Pig  and  Pepper"  by  Lena  Salins,  Ellen  Schaefer-Salins, 
Edward  Wakeling,  Selwyn  Goodacre,  and  Joel  Birenbaum. 
A  dinner  that  night  was  held  at  the 
Mirabelle  restaurant,  with  all  invited. 
The  legendary  Byron  Sewell  (below) 
read  a  hilarious  parody  called  "The 
Mock  Bison"   from  his  Alice's 
Adventures  in  Banff.  The  board  met 
afterward,  which  lasted  well  into  the 
night,  as  they  discussed  the  Spring 
2001  gathering,  which  will  take 
place  April  21st,  2001  at  the  Fales 
Library  (of  N.  Y.U.)  in  New  York  and 
will  feature  talks  by  Morton  Cohen 
(on  collector  Alfred  Berol),  Dr. 
Hugues  Lebailly,   and  Roberta 
Rogow  (author  of  the  C.L.  Dodgson/ 
Arthur    Conan    Doyle    mystery 
stories). 

The      Harry      Ransom 
Humanities  Research  Center  (HRC) 
at  UTA,  which  holds  three  very 
significant  Carroll  collections  -  the 
historically    important    Warren 
Weaver,  the  more  modern  Byron 
Sewell,  and  the  Helmut  Gernsheim 
of  photographs  and  albums  -  was  our 
gracious  host  for  the  Saturday  gathering.  The  HRC  had  hosted 
our  Fall  1985  convocation,  and  has  been  much  in  the 
Carrollian  news  recently  for  their  "Reflections  in  a  Looking- 
Glass"  traveling  exhibition  of  his  photography. 

Despite  the  difficulties  in  parking  (due  to  a  football 
game,  which  is  Taken  Very  Seriously  there2)  and  the  early 
start  time,  there  was  a  good  turnout  of  about  forty.  An  exhibit 
had  been  set  up  in  the  foyer,  with  samples  of  their  holdings, 
including  the  1865  "India"  AW  and  Carroll's  "Commonplace 
Book",  which  was  housed,  perversely,  in  the  William  H. 
Koester  collection  of  Edgar  Allen  Poe,  which  may  be  the 
reason  that  nothing  in  that  book  had  yet  been  published  [until 
now  -  see  facing  page].  It  includes  many  fascinating  items, 
mainly  to  do  with  alphabets,  codes  and  ciphers,  but  also 
some  Chinese  characters  and  other  oddments  that  clearly 
interested  Dodgson  at  the  time.  In  1856,  for  1  February, 
Dodgson  wrote  in  his  diary:  "Began  a  MS  book  for 
miscellaneous  entries  of  anything  worth  remembering  and 
referring  to,  which  belongs  to  no  special  book."  This  is  likely 
to  be  the  referent. 


Other  items  included  a  publisher's  dummy  of 
Euclid  and  His  Modern  Rivals  with  CLD's  handwritten 
marginal  notes;  letters;  a  copy  of  drawings  made  with  his 
Electric  Pen;  and  many  fine  samples  of  the  assets  in  their 
collections  (translations,  photographs,  manuscripts,  etc.). 
Our  President  Stephanie  Lovett  welcomed  us  and 
thanked  Alan  for  all  his  hard  work  and  hospitality.  [Amen!] 
Cathy  Henderson,  Associate  Librarian  of  the  HRC  gave  us 
a  brief  overview  of  their  incredible  holdings  of  rare  books 
and  manuscripts.  Although  they  specialize  in  19th  and  20th 
century  literature,  film,  theater,  and  photography,  their 
possessions  (about  800,000  volumes  and  37  million 
manuscripts!)  range  from  incunabula  and  a  Gutenberg  Bible 
to  the  21st  century. 

President  emeritus  Sandor 

Burstein  gave  a  welcoming  speech 

to  Byron  Sewell.  The  multitalented 

Byron  (who  studied  art  for  three 

years    at    UTA)    has    written, 

illustrated,  and  published  many 

dozens  of  outrageously  delightful 

Alice-themed  works  over  the  last 

quarter-century     through     his 

"Chicken    Little's    Press",   the 

LCSNA,  and  various  commercial 

publishers.  A  few  highlights  must 

suffice  here  -  his  illustrated  Snark 

with  "concertina"-style  folds,  his 

brilliant  bilingual  AWs  in  Pitjan- 

tjatjara  (aboriginal  Australian)  and 

Korean,  the  two  issues  of  Scientific 

Alician,   and  his  decades-long 

compendium  of  the  American  AW 

editions  through  1960,  Much  of  a 

Muchness.  Listing  his  manifold 

contributions  to  our  world  would  be 

nigh-to-impossible,  but  August 

Imholtz  has  spent  many  months 

compiling  an  "interim"  bibliography  -  "interim"  as  Byron 

is  still  creating  his  fabulous  works  -  which  is  called  Enough 

of  a  Muchness  and  was  distributed  as  a  keepsake  to  members 

in  attendance.  Byron,  a  chemical  engineer  and  father  of  two 

young  girls,  has  been  away  from  the  Carrollian  world  for  a 

spell,  and  so  was  "welcomed  back  with  extreme  delight  and 

joy",  as  Sandor  put  it,  a  sentiment  shared  by  all,  especially 

as  he  was  with  us  in  person. 

Our  first  lecture  was  by  Roy  Flukinger,  Senior 
Curator  of  the  HRC  Photography  and  Film  Collection.  His 
fine  talk  "After  Words",  speaking  on  the  place  of 
photography  in  Dodgson 's  life  and  his  place  in  the  early  years 
of  the  new  art  form,  was  an  elaboration  on  his  essay 
published  as  the  "afterword"  of  the  "Reflections"  catalog 
(above).  "Throughout  his  writings,  Dodgson  characterized 
photography  as  many  things:  art,  pastime,  recreation,  hobby, 
profession,  devotion,  entertainment,  fascination,  practice, 
chief  interest,  and  his  'one  amusement'."  Flukinger  dealt 
with  the  dichotomy  of  the  medium  -  a  blend  of  art  and  hard 


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a  page  from  Carroll's  "Commonplace  Book"  reproduced  with  the  kind  permission  of 
The  Harry  Ransom  Humanities  Research  Center 
The  University  of  Texas  at  Austin 
3 


science  -  and  its  "inevitable"  attraction  to  the  similarly- 
conflicted  CLD;  the  place  of  commercial  printers  in  his 
work;  the  province  of  cropping,  retouching,  and  hand- 
coloring;  and  the  importance  of  his  photograph  albums. 
Thirty-three  were  sold  after  his  death;  today  only  thirteen 
are  of  known  whereabouts,  five  of  them  in  the  HRC 
collection.  Roy  concluded  poetically  "As  any  photographer 
who  has  slipped  beneath  the  dark  cloth  and  focused  a  portion 
of  the  world  upon  its  ground  glass  can  tell  you,  the  eloquent 
mirror  of  the  lens  inverts  and  reverses  that  world  -  optically, 
mathematically,  and  magically.  As  the  Rev.  Charles  L. 
Dodgson  posed  his  subjects  and  viewed  them  through  his 
lens  he  created  his  own  special  world  and,  emerging  from 
the  dark  cloth  as  Lewis  Carroll,  brought  back  for  all  of  us 
many  special  faces,  scenes,  and  dreams  from  that  wondrous 
dimension:  where  light  and  life,  alongside  imagination  and 
truth,  can  flourish  as  they  did  within  his  very  soul." 

A  short  break  enabled  us  to  examine  the  exhibit 
more  carefully. 

Edward  Wakeling,  scholar,  collector,  editor  of 
Carroll's  complete  Diaries,  chairman  of  the  Editorial  Board 
of  the  LCS  (UK)'s  journal,  The  Carrollian,  began  his  talk 
"Bringing  Lewis  Carroll's  Photography  into  Better  Focus" 
with  a  list  of  forty-two  or  so  questions,  which  he  began  to 
answer  over  the  course  of  his  fascinating  lecture. 
(Fortunately  for  those  not  present,  Edward's  vast  knowledge 
will  be  available  next  year  in  a  book  containing  400  lesser- 
known  CLD  photographs,  which  he  has  written  with 
photographic  historian  Roger  Taylor,  and  is  scheduled  to  be 
published  by  Princeton  University  Press  next  October.) 
Wakeling  "just  happened"  to  have  his  four-week  resident 
Research  Fellowship  at  the  HRC  overlap  with  this  meeting. 
Wakeling  estimates  Dodgson  to  have  taken  three 
thousand  pictures  during  his  twenty-five  year  photographic 
career.  Dodgson's  register  of  them,  indexed  by  the  numbers 
which  he  scratched  on  the  negative  plates,  has  most 
unfortunately  been  lost.  Wakeling,  with  the  help  of  modern 
database  techniques,  is  in  the  process  of  re-creating  it,  and 
has  over  fifteen  hundred  images  identified  by  date,  sitter, 
and  so  on,  correcting  many  of  the  past  errors  in  other 
volumes.  Other  data  are  forthcoming,  but  whether  we  will 
ever  have  the  complete  catalogue  raisonne  of  all  his  images 
is  doubtful.  Fortunately,  the  aforementioned  volume  will 
include  a  listing  of  all  known  images. 

Edward  told  some  anecdotes  about  the  "jigsaw 
puzzle"  he  was  solving,  including  the  identification  of  an 
album  by  "R.S"  which  came  into  his  hands  as  it  had  a  picture 
of  CLD.  Wakeling  identified  it  as  the  work  of  Reginald 
Southey,  CLD's  great  friend  who  had  taught  him  the  art. 
Edward,  ever  the  collector,  attempted  to  downplay  its 
significance  and  purchase  it  outright,  but  was  turned  down 
and  it  eventually  sold  at  auction  for  £23,500.  Happily,  it 
was  then  donated  to  Princeton. 

Edward's  collaborator,  Roger  Taylor,  sees  three 
distinct  periods  in  Dodgson's  work:  an  early  one  of  learning 
and  mild  experimentation;  the  Badcock's  Yard  studio  years 
with  its  Pre-Raphaelite  ideals;  and  the  Tom  Quad  studio  with 


more  posed,  deliberate  portraiture  and  tableaux.  They 
estimate  that  30%  of  Dodgson's  photos  are  of  adults,  6% 
of  his  own  family,  4%  of  scenery,  and  10%  miscellaneous 
still-lifes  and  so  on.  Half  of  his  oeuvre  were  therefore  of 
children.  There  are  only  30  of  the  Liddells,  50  of  Xie 
Kitchin,  and  about  30  nudes  (1%  of  his  total  oeuvre) 
involving  the  children  of  eight  families. 

Edward  compared  the  work  in  the  two  studios, 
discussed  CLD's  composition,  his  commercial  outings,  and 
his  reasons  for  giving  up  the  art  form  [the  letter  Wakeling 
cited  as  the  best  evidence  was  published  in  the  Knight 
Letter  57,  page  4].  He  concluded  his  talk:  "Photography 
became  an  extravagance  that  could  be  put  aside.  Yet  we  have 
an  opus  of  work  at  the  birth  of  photography  covering  a 
quarter  of  a  century  that  has  stood  the  march  of  time  and 
established  Dodgson  as  a  foremost  photographer  of  his  age." 

Next,  August  Imholtz,  representing  the  nominating 
committee  (Ellie  Luchinsky,  Janet  Jurist,  and  himself), 
proposed  the  following  slate  of  officers  for  the  next  two 
years: 

President:  Stephanie  Lovett 

Vice-President:  Mark  Burstein 

Treasurer:  Francine  Abeles 

Secretary:  Cindy  Watter 

Directors:  Pat  Griffin  and  Germaine  Weaver  (no 
relation  to  Warren) 

They  were  formally  elected  by  acclamation  without 
noticeable  opposition. 

We  then  went  downstairs  for  lunch,  where  another 
exhibit  had  been  prepared  from  the  Sewell  collection. 

Our  postprandial  activity  was  a  panel  on  Warren 
Weaver  (1894-1978)  -  collector,  pioneer  cyberneticist,  and 
author  of  the  seminal  Alice  in  Many  Tongues  -  whose 
Carroll  collection  resides  at  the  HRC.  Moderator  Charlie 
Lovett  acquired,  from  Weaver's  daughter,  an  album 
containing  fifty  years  of  Weaver's  correspondence  and  so 
was  able  to  quote  generously  therefrom.  "From  my  early 
childhood  I  was  interested  in  acquiring,  reading,  and  hoarding 
books.  I  still  have  a  tattered  and  soiled  copy  of  AW  which 
has,  on  the  reverse  of  the  frontispiece,  a  stamped  notice 
(how  proud  I  was  of  that  rubber  stamp)  'Warren  Weaver, 
No.  1'.  It  was  the  first  book  I  owned  and  it  has,  with  me, 
held  a  preferred  position  ever  since." 

Weaver's  journey  continued  through  the  California 
Institute  of  Technology  and  the  University  of  Wisconsin, 
where  he  became  Professor  of  Mathematics  -  but  more 
importantly  (for  us)  found  a  small  "elementary  discussion 
of  a  dull  topic  in  Algebra"  in  a  catalogue  which  he  bought 
"for  a  dollar  or  two"  from  a  dealer  who  did  not  remember 
that  the  "C.L.Dodgson"  who  had  inscribed  it  was  a  rather 
important  personage. 

Over  the  next  thirty-five  years,  Weaver  would 
become  a  foundation  executive.  "As  one  of  the  directors  of 
the  Rockefeller  Foundation,  it  was  part  of  my  business  to 
travel  very  widely.  And  this,  with  the  accompanying  chance 
to  drop  into  the  shops  of  book  dealers  in  dozens  of 
countries,  together  with  my  professional  interest  in  the 


problems  of  translating  from  language  to  language,  led  me 
to  concentrate  on  the  translations  of  Alice."  He  also 
recruited  book  scouts  from  among  his  colleagues,  including 
several  Nobel  laureates. 

Weaver's  interest  in  machine  translation  dates  at 
least  back  to  1947,  and  his  The  Mathematical  Theory  of 
Communication  (1949,  with  Claude  Shannon),  is 
considered  a  cornerstone  of  information  age  thought.  His 
publications  on  scientific  and  mathematical  topics  are 
considerable. 

A  letter  to  a  professor  of  English  at  UTA  dated  2 
February  1965  begins  "I  have  a  large  Carroll  collection, 
containing  roughly  fifty  presentation  copies  and  many,  if 
indeed  not  most,  of  the  more  rare  items.  In  particular  I  have 
a  very  special  presentation  copy  of  the  1 866  Macmillan 
Alice,  both  variants  of  the  Appleton  1866,  and  a  copy,  in 
original  binding,  of  the  excessively  rare  1865...  At  the  age 
of  71  I  am  beginning  to  wonder  what  is  going  to  happen  to 
this  collection!".  This  was  the  beginning  of  what  became 
Harry  Ransom's  purchase  of  the  collection  and  its  eventual 
home  in  the  building  in  which  we  were  sitting.  The  price  for 
the  treasures  he  had  accumulated  over  fifty  years  -  including 
the  1 865  "India"  Alice  -  was  (hold  on  to  your  hats)  $65,000. 
And  Warren  lived  another  thirteen  years. 

Weaver's  role  as  a  mathematician  and  expositor 
of  modern  science  was  next  discussed  by  Fran  Abeles.  At 
his  death,  CLD  left  a  box  of  62  mathematical  packets,  which 
was  eventually  purchased  by  Morris  Parrish  in  1929.  Weaver 
was  asked  to  look  over  this  Nachlafi.  Dodgson's  emphasis 
on  axioms  and  logic  in  his  development  of  topics  was  at 
odds  with  the  more  applied  approach  Weaver  favored,  a 
difference  that  contributed  to  his  underestimation  of  CLD's 
prowess  in  this  field.  Weaver's  paper  was  initially  published 
in  the  Proceedings  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society.* 

Dr.  Abeles  identified  and  presented  a  few  important 
but  hitherto  unpublished  major  pieces  from  this  collection, 
and  chose  a  few  unusual  problems  and  methods  for  us  to 
enjoy.  Among  the  former  are  a  book  on  "Circle  Squaring" 
aimed  at  discouraging  dilettantes;  one  on  a  theory  of  parallel 
lines  that  would  include  geometric  infinitesimals;  a  second 
book  on  determinants;  and  a  system  of  memorizing 
logarithms,  making  use  of  his  "Memoria  Technica".  Among 
the  latter  were  a  rule  for  computing  interest  in  days,  a  new 
method  for  multiplying  by  a  decimal  greater  than  .5,  and 
methods  for  rapid  computation,  which  enabled  him  to 
calculate  the  value  of  tt11  in  fourteen  minutes. 

August  Imholtz  then  took  the  lectern  for  a  look  at 
what  most  of  us  know  Warren  Weaver  for  -  translation  -  in 
a  talk  entitled  "Warren  and  the  Pirates"  for  reasons  which 
may  become  clear  later.  Weaver's  book  Alice  in  Many 
Tongues,  published  in  1 964  by  the  University  of  Wisconsin 
Press,  has  become  "a  classic  work  on  a  classic  book".  The 
genesis  of  the  book  can  be  traced  back  to  a  letter  Weaver 
wrote  in  January,  1 96 1 ,  to  a  gentleman  in  Kenya  stating  "I 
have  agreed  to  read  a  paper,  in  March,  before  the  Rowfant 
Club  in  Cleveland  (one  of  the  very  good  literary  clubs  of 
this  country)  on  some  aspect  of  AW.  And  I  have  decided  to 


use  the  title  'Alice  in  the  Tower  of  Babel'." 

The  book  begins  with  three  chapters  introducing 
the  idea  of  the  "universal  child";  a  biography  of  CLD;  and 
the  history  of  AW.  It  then  discusses  the  early  translations  in 
CLD's  lifetime  (and  CLD's  views  on  the  subject),  examines 
the  dilemmas  of  translation  (and  specifically  why  this  book 
is  so  problematic),  and  ends  with  a  table  of  42  (!)  languages. 

Weaver  illustrated  the  difficulties  by  performing 
an  experiment:  he  took  a  dozen  translations  of  a  passage 
from  the  Mad  Tea  Party  (containing  "one  parodied  verse, 
three  puns,  one  invented  word,  one  logical  joke,  and  eight 
instances  of  what  he  called  'twists'"),  sent  them  to  native 
speakers  who  had  a  perfect  command  of  English,  and  asked 
them  to  translate  it  back  without,  of  course,  consulting  the 
original.  (An  analogy  was  made  to  the  way  Dodgson  derived 
his  famous  pseudonym  by  translating  his  name  into  Latin 
and  back.) 

Imholtz  illustrated  this  with  the  double-translation 
from  the  Swahili,  translated  originally  by  Sister  Ermyntrude, 
and  read  from  her  correspondence  with  Weaver.  August 
presented  the  results  of  an  informal  survey  he  did  of  some 
present-day  collectors  and  found  that  today  Alice  exists  in 
at  least  twice,  perhaps  thrice,  as  many,  languages  as  Weaver's 
42  count,  depending  on  how  one  defines  "language"  (do 
dialects  count?  Gregg  shorthand?),  "translation"  (do 
abridgements  or  retellings  count?)  and  so  on. 

He  explained  the  title  of  his  talk  -  a  reference  to 
Milt  Caniff  s  "Terry  and  the  Pirates"  comic  strip  (Warren 
Weaver,  inveterate  traveler,  making  the  world  safe  for 
democracy  in  his  work  with  the  Rockefeller  foundation); 
also  pirates  often  "melt  down  and  recast  their  booty",  a  good 
metaphor  for  the  work  of  the  translator;  and  the  thrill 
collectors  share  with  buccaneers  in  finding  treasure. 

August  then  attempted  to  read  an  excerpt  in  Swahili 
("Popo  pop  unang  aje/Niabie  wafanyaje?"  -  "Twinkle, 
Twinkle,  little  bat"),  as  Charlie  did  in  Pidgin.  Fortunately 
no  native  speakers  of  either  were  present. 


William  Jay  Smith,  Sandor  Burstein,  Byron  Sewell 

A  keepsake  entitled  Warren  Weaver:  Scientist, 
Humanitarian,  Carrollian;  With  a  Bibliography  of  the 
Lewis  Carroll  Publications  of  Warren  Weaver,  edited  by 
Charlie  Lovett,  and  containing  the  essences  of  these  three 
talks,  was  also  distributed  to  those  in  attendance. 


William  Jay  Smith,  now  eighty-two,  published  his 
first  book  of  poems  in  1947,  inaugurating  a  long  and  disting- 
uished career  producing  more  than  fifty  books  of  poetry, 
children's  verse,  translations,  essays,  criticism,  anthologies 
and  memoirs.  He  has  taught  at  both  Williams  and  Hollins, 
has  served  from  1968  to  1970  as  Consultant  in  Poetry  to 
the  Library  of  Congress  (a  post  now  called  Poet  Laureate), 
and  is  a  fellow  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters. 
As  a  student  at  Washington  University,  Smith  was  a  founder 
of  a  Poetry  Society  (along  with  his  friend  Tom,  later  known 
to  the  world  as  "Tennessee",  Williams)  and  earned  both  a 
bachelor's  and  a  master's  degree  in  French  literature. 

It  was  altogether  fitting  that  Mr.  Smith  was  a  bene- 
ficiary of  the  Stan  Marx  Memorial  lectureship,  as  Stan,  one 
of  our  founders  and  our  first  President,  was  a  dear  friend  of 
his. Smith's  sub- 
ject was  "Lewis 
Carroll  as  Poet: 
Dream  and  Night- 
mare?". 

He  began 
with  Carroll's  boy- 
hood dream  to 
"wander  through/ 
the  wide  world/and 
chase  the  buffalo." 
The  buffalo  was  an 
exotic  beast  back 
then,  full  of  Wild 
West  associations, 
and  became  em- 
blematic for  the 
young  Charles,  as 
he  ventured  out  on 
his  lifelong  quest. 

Smith 

believes  Carroll's  serious  and  sentimental  poems  often  ought 
to  be  consigned  to  oblivion;  his  example  was  '"Tis  Love" 
from  Sylvie  and  Bruno,  a  genre  of  Carroll's  poetry  which 
he  found  "particularly  distressing  and  eminently 
forgettable".  On  the  other  hand  were  the  "iridescent  gems" 
of  his  nonsense  and  parodies.  Smith  read  to  us,  and 
commented  on,  portions  of  "Father  William",  of  which  he 
said  "the  entire  poem  is  a  somersault"  -  the  inversion  of 
reality,  the  father/child  reversal  and  the  acrobatic  clown  of 
the  title;  "Jabberwocky",  a  poem  of  transformation  (with  a 
father/son  reversal);  and  the  "Snark",  a  satire  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  heroic  sagas,  again  in  which  a  father  becomes  a 
"burbling  babe"  and  in  which  Carroll  opened  an  existential 
door  to  life's  essential  meaninglessness.  Smith  mentioned 
the  poem's  "apian  heritage"  (all  those  "B"s)  and  then 
discussed  "The  Aged,  Aged  Man"  with  its  reappearance  of 
the  buffalo. 

Smith  noted  that  Wordsworth,  in  his  poem 
"Resolution  and  Independence"  (1807)  which  was  the  basis 
of  that  satire,  contains  the  lines  "We  Poets  in  our  youth 
begin  in  gladness  ;/But  thereof  come  in  the  end  despondency 


and  madness."  His  conclusion?  "Nonsense  kept  him  sane." 
We  were  then  treated,  by  popular  request,  to 
Smith's  lively  reading  of  some  of  his  own  charmingly 
nonsensical  works,  including  "Pidgin  Pinch"  and  other 
selections  from  his  books  Around  My  Room  and  Laughing 
Time. 

A  few  hours  later,  our  hosts  for  a  fabulous  dinner 
and  shmoozefest  were  Alison  and  Alan  Tannenbaum.  Young 
Charles  Dodgson  need  search  no  more:  a  gargantuan 
stuffed  buffalo  head  dominated  the  Tannenbaum 's  Texas- 
sized  living  room!  Dozens  of  little  stuffed  critters  were 
everywhere  one  put  one's  feet  (Alison  is  an  amateur  taxi- 
dermist), lending  a  properly  surreal  air.  We  were  given  plenty 
of  opportunity  to  view  Alan's  extensive  collection  (one  of 
the  highlights  of  which  was  a  Williams  "Wonderland"  pinball 

machine!). 

After 
a  delicious 
dinner  of  Ali- 
cian-themed 
food  and  won- 
derful conver- 
sation, guests 
were  present- 
ed with  oy- 
stershells 
with  little  feet 
glued  on,  and 
coasters  ad- 
v  e  r  t  i  s  i  n  g 
"Beamish" 
Irish  stout. 
Then  Selwyn 
Goodacre  was 
most  amusing 
in   his   brief 

talk.  He  spoke  of  the  abysmal  poverty  of  his  memory,  in 
fact  once  failing  to  recognize  his  own  daughter  when  she 
came  to  the  door  having  recently  had  her  hair  cut. 
Nonetheless,  he  was  immediately  able  to  identify  the 
previously  unknown  (but  theorized)  sixth  variant  of  the 
rejected  "Sixty  Thousand"  People's  Edition  in  Alan's 
collection.  We  collectors  certainly  applaud  his  sense  of 
priority,  and  thus  inspired,  rode  off  into  the  Texan  sunset. 


/.  Lewis  Carroll  at  Texas,  Carroll  Studies  #8,  published  by  the 
HRC  in  1 985  and  distributed  by  the  LCSNA  is  a  catalog  of  their 
materials,  and  includes  Warren  Weaver's  essay  "In  Pursuit  of 
Lewis  Carroll" 

2.  The  UTA  Longhorns  "stomped"  the  hapless  Baylor  Bears  (of 
Waco)  48-14 

3.  Visit  them  virtually  at  www.hrc.utexas.edu. 

4.  Vol.  98  No.  5,  1 5  October  1 954 


Well,  You  Know,  ... 

Martin  Gardner  writes: 

James  B.  Hobbs,  professor  emeritus  of  business 
administration  and  associate  dean  emeritus  of  the  College 
of  Arts  and  Sciences  at  Lehigh  University  in  Bethlehem  PA, 
recently  called  my  attention  to  an  aspect  of  both  Alice  books 
that  I  had  not  noticed  before.  He  was  struck  by  the  unusual 
frequency  with  which  Alice  and  23  other  of  her  compan- 
ions needlessly  interject  "you  know"  into  their  conversa- 
tions. 

In  recent  years,  the  use  of  "you  know"  in  the  United 
States  has  become  a  compulsion  among  many  young  people, 
athletes,  talk-show  hosts  and  their  guests.  In  some  cases,  it 
seems  impossible  for  them  to  utter  a  sentence  without  in- 
terjecting "you  know".  Although  unlikely  that  American 
children  picked  up  the  habit  merely  from  reading  the  Alice 
duad,  the  question  arises:  Was  this  a  common  practice  of 
dialogue  in  Carroll's  day?  Or  might  another  explanation 
exist? 

First  the  facts;  then  two  conjectures.  Alice  need- 
lessly interjects  "you  know"  3 1  times  in  the  two  volumes. 
(The  twenty  times  the  phrase  was  used  as  a  question  or  as  a 
declarative  statement  are  excluded.)  The  phrase  is  used  a 
total  of  86  times  in  the  two  books:  five  times  each  by  the 
White  Knight,  Humpty  Dumpty,  and  the  Red  Queen,  and  four 
times  by  the  White  Queen.  Nineteen  other  characters  use 
the  phase  between  one  and  three  times.  After  being  con- 
fronted with  so  many  "you  knows",  it  was  most  gratifying 
to  observe  the  Caterpillar's  retort  in  Wonderland  to  Alice 
bemoaning  her  changing  size  so  often,  "you  know":  "I  don 't 
know!" 

Hobbs  also  tabulated  the  frequency  that  "you  see" 
is  used  by  Alice  and  her  companions  in  the  two  volumes. 
Although  Alice  uses  this  phrase  only  twice  -  once  in  con- 
versation, again  with  Caterpillar,  where  he  says:  "I  don't  see!" 
-  the  White  Knight  uses  it  eight  times,  the  narrator  seven, 
and  seven  other  characters  once  or  twice.  Total  "you  see" 
interjections  is  26.  A  third  phrase,  "of  course",  is  used  35 
times:  six  by  Mock  Turtle,  four  by  Humpty  Dumpty,  and 
between  once  and  three  times  by  15  other  characters  (in- 
cluding Alice  thrice). 

Two  conjectures  arise  as  to  why  Carroll  interjected 
these  three  phrases  so  frequently.  One:  such  phrases  might 
have  been  the  norm  in  talking  with  or  between  small  chil- 
dren, particularly  little  girls,  during  the  middle  and  late  19th 
centuries.  Two:  (and  Hobbs  suggests  the  more  plausible) 
Carroll  (or  C.L.Dodgson)  was  a  teacher/professor  and  a 
logician/mathematician.  Instructors  frequently  use  "you 
know"  and  "you  see"  to  clarify  (hopefully  or  in  fact)  the 
point  under  discussion.  And  it  is  also  not  uncommon  to 
emphasize  a  point  (whether  complex  or  "simple")  with  an 
"of  course"  thrown  in.  To  boot,  bred  into  the  logician/math- 
ematician is  the  discipline  to  develop  detailed  proofs  for 
theorems  and  constructs,  which  are  often  terminated  with 
the  super-flourish:  "obviously  such  and  so  is  the  conclu- 
sion or  insight!"  Nary  an  "obvious"  appears  in  either  tome, 
suggesting  that  Carroll  may  have  replaced  a  natural  (or 


trained)  tendency  to  use  the  word  with  the  less  harsh  and 
intimidating  "you  know",  ctyou  see"  or  "of  course". 

I  would  greatly  appreciate  learning  if  the  frequency 
of  these  three  phrases  has  been  noticed  by  other  Carroll 
scholars,  and  if  so,  their  thoughts  on  the  matter. 

[There  was  also  a  chart  tabulating  the  characters  and  the 
occurrences  of  these  phrases. 

An  eMail  forwarded  to  Edmund  Weiner,  the  Principal 
Philologist  ofOED,  inquiring  about  the  correct  rhetorical 
term  for  unwarranted  interjections  received  this  reply: 

"I  think  the  traditional  word  is  'expletive ',  defined  by 
OED  as  'serving  merely  to  fill  out  a  sentence,  help  out  a 
metrical  line,  etc. '  I  think  that  in  modern  grammar  a  more 
accurate  term  is  'filler ',  defined  by  the  Oxford  Dictionary 
of  English  Grammar  as  'A  word,  usually  outside  the  syntax 
of  an  adjoining  clause,  that  serves  to  fill  what  might 
otherwise  be  an  unwanted  pause  in  conversation.  ' 
Another  term  for  this  is  'pragmatic  particle '.  "] 


fa  yh*A4>  ;fcJU/ifK  dl&i^g  i,&  thAMhe^.  $£e*4e,  A,f 
Ol&aa.  Hbs^X  4***AJLJL<9  ^e^e  (bkxVAA^yL  -fotf-tfe, 


Addenda,  Errata,  and  IHuminata 

The  article  entitled  "Hidden  Treasure"  in  AX  64,  p.  18  took 
as  its  source  some  of  the  earliest  dispatches  regarding  the 
discovery  of  Carroll's  last  letters.  A  sentence  read,  in  part, 
"The  final  letter...  with  which  he  sent  a  plum  cake..."  was 
corrected  in  later  reports  to  "...with  which  Dodgson 
enclosed  a  copy  of  The  Lost  Plum  Cake,  a  children's  book 
written  by  his  niece  E.G.  Wilcox." 

Quiz: 

What  is  the  meaning  and  relevance  of  this  poem? 

Un  petit  d'un  petit 
S'etonne  aux  Halles 
Un  petit  d'un  petit 
Ah!  Degres  te  fallent 
Indolent  qui  ne  sort  cesse 
Indolent  qui  ne  se  mene 
Qu'importe  un  petit  d'un  petit 
Tout  Gai  de  Reguennes. 

Hint:  fluency  in  French  is  not  necessary;  in  fact  a  positive 
handicap.  Answer  on  p.  18. 


Poet  Stephanie  Bolster:  Alice  After  Alice 

Chloe  Nichols 

"Imagine  her  this  way,  imagine  her  that  way:  these 
portraits  allow  Alice  to  change,  to  step  outside  the 
frame  of  Wonderland...  "  -  Sue  Sinclair 

"...this  curious  cbil4  W3S  very  fond  of  pretending 
to  be  two  people." 

I.  "Alice  -  Poet" 

When  I  was  younger  -  much  -  it  was  trendy  to  have 
several  actors  play  the  same  role  in  Shakespeare, 
simultaneously.  They  stood  for  different  dimensions  of  the 
character  -  son,  lover,  sidekick,  and  so  on.  You  had  choral 
soliloquies.  Stage  doors  widened;  Othello  doubled  or  tripled 
as  his  own  honor  guard.  It  got  so  you  couldn't  tell  an  intimate 
death  scene  from  a  battlefield.  Yet,  somehow,  either  in  spite 
of  the  inevitable  chaos  -  or  because  of  it  -  the  real  Hamlet 
did  truly  occur.  Coalesce. 

In  the  same  way,  in  the  work  of  a  young  Canadian 
poet,  Stephanie  Bolster,  Alice  Liddell  also  materializes  by 
multiplication,  though  with  much  less  ado.  Maybe  that 
happens  because  poetry's  stage  is  naturally  larger  than 
drama's;  or  maybe  it's  because  this  particular  poet,  even  so 
early  in  her  career,  already  has  what  it  takes  to  make  the 
difficult  look  easy. 

Now,  I  only  recently  stumbled  (by  good  fortune 
and  the  suggestion  of  friends,  among  them  Ian  Lancashire) 
across  Stephanie  Bolster.  She  had  published  White  Stone,  a 
collection  about  Alice,  in  1998,  and  is  now  Assistant 
Professor  of  Creative  Writing  at  Concordia  University  in 
Montreal.  Very  graciously,  Bolster  agreed  to  an  e-mail 
interview  for  the  Knight  Letter. 

"She  cannot  move  unless  her  double  move"  [sic]  - 
a  line  about  Alice  by  Allen  Tate  reminded  me  of  the 
ambiguity  in  her  -  this  ordinary/extraordinary  child:  is  she 
adrift  or  detached?  intrepid  or  implacable?  Carroll  suggests 
the  divisions  are  deliberate,  even  antagonistic:  "trying  to 
box  her  own  ears...  this  curious  child  was  very  fond  of 
pretending  to  be  two  people."  In  Stephanie  Bolster's  work, 
I  saw  at  once  a  way  to  touch  and  move,  even  manipulate, 
Alice,  for  Bolster,  far  from  leaving  her  in  Wonderland, 
locates  her  at  many  times  and  places  -  in  the  major  moments 
of  Alice's  own  real-life;  in  the  poet's  personal  epiphanies; 
or  set  against  characters  real  or  fictional,  and  separate  from 
either  of  them.  In  one  poem  she  even  becomes  "The  Poet  as 
Nine  Portraits  of  Alice". 

Just  as  astonishing  as  finding  Alice  so  variously 
staged  was  Bolster's  unintrusive  accuracy.  Here  was 
someone  approaching  the  "curious  child"  with  almost 
pediatric  thoroughness  -  someone  kind,  undivided;  no  ear- 
boxer  here  -  whom  I  could  like,  and  someone  who  did  like 
Alice  -  her  friend  but  not  her  follower.  All  of  this  marks 
Bolster's  first  book,  White  Stone.  Carroll  fans  will 
recognize  in  that  name  the  classical  watchword  Charles 
Dodgson  used  in  his  diary  to  record  his  favorite  days.  I  was 
impressed  with  Bolster's  instinctive  honesty. 

Some  general  criticism  of  Bolster's  work  is 


available,  and  she  has  other  publications,  among  them  a  brief 
portfolio  of  poems  about  paintings,  A  Tent  of  Skin,  for  the 
Canadian  National  Gallery.  In  1999  she  published  a  second 
book,  Two  Bowls  of  Milk.  Bolster  has  a  pretty  and  convenient 
site  on  the  Internet,  copyrighted  to  the  University  of  Toronto 
(http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/bolster/ 
write.htm).  There  you  can  find  a  brief  vita,  a  discussion  by 
the  poet,  and  some  criticism.  A  few  of  her  most  frequently 
discussed  poems  are  linked  to  that  site.  White  Stone  is 
published  by  Veliicule  Press,  and  the  homepage  gives  the 
address.  Her  critics  tend  to  study  either  the  poet  herself  or 
her  individual  poems  -  overlooking,  in  my  view,  valuable 
questions  about  craft  and  technique,  the  questions  Bolster 
asks  herself.  For  this  poet,  more  than  most,  is  drawn  through 
her  own  material  to  examine  her  intention,  so  the  unifying 
interplay  of  that  work  is  important.  "By  placing  Alice  within 
my  own  place  and  time,  I  was  able  to  see  that  here  and  now 
were  every  bit  as  rich,  nonsensical  and  distressing  as  both 
Wonderland  and  Victorian  England."  She  goes  on, 
"Increasingly,  I  wrote  about  'the  real  Alice',  whose  life,  as  I 
grew  up  through  writing  about  her,  seemed  far  more 
fascinating  than  the  life  of  a  child  in  an  imaginary  world." 

The  entire  collection  of  her  poems  seems  designed 
to  form  one  organic  whole.  Thoughtfully  specific  poem 
titles  and  the  highly  organized  table  of  contents  carefully 
guide  the  reader  through  a  consistent  whole.  Every  poem 
becomes  both  text  and  context  -  it  is  a  remarkable 
achievement  and  proof  of  her  inclusiveness.  The  title  is 
White  Stone,  not  White  Stones.  Still,  the  homepage  is 
excellent  for  showing  at  a  glance  the  breadth  of  her  subject 
matter  and  approach,  and  her  easy,  even-handed  precision. 
Her  style  is  spare,  exact,  reaching,  and  lightly  laced  with 
wit.  Carroll  would  have  liked  it. 

Since  Bolster's  star  is  still  new,  it  may  be  natural 
that  published  criticism  is  sadly  uneven,  and  can  even  be 
dismissive  and  patronizing.  Time  Magazine's  Katherine 
Govier,  cataloging  Canadian  poets,  identifies  Bolster  as 
dispassionate,  bloodless,  with  a  "maidenly  archness"  -  "a 
cool,  academic  poet. . .  seeking  inspiration  in  things  as  they 
strike  her  eye."  Bolster's  "great  refinement"  is  finally  too 
"ethereal"  to  satisfy.  My  guess  is  that  Govier,  working  only 
with  the  nine  poems  of  A  Tent  of  Skin,  has  overlooked  the 
layered  unity  of  the  Alice-centered  writing.  For,  although 
Bolster  had  already  taken  important  prizes  before  its 
publication,  White  Stone  brought  her  highest  acclaim  and 
the  most  noteworthy  honor  to  date,  the  Canadian  Governor 
General's  Award  in  1998.  Critic  Douglas  Barbour  praises  a 
"documented"  approach  which  both  remains  true  to  Alice's 
biography  and  "introject(s)  the  writer".  Sue  Sinclair  calls 
the  collection  "multi-layered,  multi-textured,"  and  the  true 
Alice  "essentially  elusive".  The  link,  in  her  view,  is 
loneliness;  Alice's  own  connects  to  the  "loneliness  that 
seems  to  belong  to  the  poet"  and  results  in  a  "particular  and 
specific  relationship  to  the  Alices." 

Bolster  is  not  alone  in  this  feeling. 

Alice  Pleasance  Liddell  Hargreaves  -  child, 
woman,  symbol,  myth  -  continues  to  attract  serious  writers 


and  illustrators  in  surprising  numbers.  Even  the  initial 
popularity  of  Alice  inspired  a  rage  of  children's  works  of 
outright  imitation  and  parody,  some  so  crammed  with  morals 
that  the  Duchess  might  have  written  them.  Alongside  Alice's 
first  conquest,  Charles  Dodgson,  modern  creators  treating 
her  include  Lewis  Padgett,  Joyce  Carol  Oates,  poet  Allen 
Tate,  filmmakers  Dennis  Potter  and  Jan  Svankmajer. 

Bolster  sees  in  her  many  Alices  a  network  of  paths 

-  into  Wonderland,  Victorian  England,  contemporary 
society,  Greek  myth  -  and  as  well,  into  herself,  her  art.  Alice 
has  been  a  focusing  lens.  She  is  "very  multiple  for  me: 
grandmother,  mother,  sister,  child,  friend  -  she  is  the  women 
in  my  life,  real  and  imagined."  Yet,  although  White  Stone  is 
only  a  couple  of  years  old,  Bolster  also  calls  her  journey 
complete,  "She  is  still  alive  for  me,  but  her  heart,  unknown 
to  me,  is  absent."  It  is  a  little  as  if  Dante  had  discharged 
Beatrice  before  finishing  the  tour  of  heaven.  Of  all  the 
volume's  surprises,  this  is  the  strangest,  for  her  break  with 
Alice  is  more  announced  than  explained:  "She  is  /  nowhere. . . 
Who  did  I  dream  I'd  find?"  Bolster  implies  (to  me  it  seems) 
that  she  simply  passed  through  Alice  like  a  train  corridor, 
glancing  out  windows.  And  nothing  in  the  book's  closing, 
breaking-off  poems,  suggests  that  the  Alice  who  had 
fascinated  her  from  childhood  initiated  the  rift. 

Alice's  boldness  first  attracted  Bolster.  Her  own 
childhood  was  timid:  "In  Grade  One  I  weep  myself/  waist- 
deep  in  tears."  She  shares  Alice's  girlhood  more 
convincingly  than  her  years  of  marriage  and  motherhood  - 
natural,  in  a  young  woman.  At  every  point,  though,  Bolster 
lets  Alice  set  the  pace  for  both  of  them.  When  Alice  is  old, 
Bolster  is  old.  When  Alice  lands  in  a  modern  kitchen  like  a 
flattened  parcel,  Bolster  mothers  her  with  Canadian  muffins. 
Yet,  ironically,  there  is  also  a  sense  of  danger  -  a  barbarian 
waif  turned  vandal,  impossible  to  tame.  Along  with  a  sense 
of  bonding  -  "I  felt  temperamentally  connected  to  Alice"  - 
there  is  also  a  trace  of  mutual  captivity,  "I've  been  wedged  a 
long  time  in  the  sad  narrows  /  between  her  and  me."  Could 
Alice  have  been  fighting  free?  In  time,  the  poet  seems  to 
have  realized,  "I  was  really  writing  my  own  Alice."  Whatever 
Alice  has  brought  to  Bolster,  she  has  not  entirely  blessed 
her. 

Although  the  poet  spent  years  researching  the  real- 
life  Alice,  she  may  be  at  her  best  when  she  gives  up  the 
documentary  approach,  and  introduces  Alice  into  strange 
company.  "Portrait  of  Alice  with  Elvis"  makes  lovers  of  two 
lonely  idols  with  only  their  fame  in  common.  Their  bi- 
cultural  castle  is  also  their  prison:  "In  sleep  /  their  tear- 
blotched  faces  could  be  anyone's."  Bolster  thinks  this 
poem's  fame  has  grown  out  of  proportion;  she  could  be  right. 
Graceland  and  Wonderland  don't  speak  the  same  language 

-  not  enough  of  it.  Elvis  and  Alice  may  be  too  vulnerable 
for  each  other.  A  better  match,  I  believe,  is  achieved  in 
"Portrait  of  Alice  with  Christopher  Robin".  In  a  snowy 
Hundred  Aker  Wood,  Christopher  Robin  and  Alice,  naked, 
share  intimacy  beside  a  fire,  pointing  to  "figures  in  the  smoke 

-  /  lumpen  bear,  white  rabbit".  This  friendship  clicks,  and 
the  couple  become  gently  appealing  in  each  other's  arms. 


II.  "Poet  -  Don" 

The  nearer  to  Alice,  the  farther  from  Carroll. 

Although  she  touches  only  lightly  on  Dodgson's 
assumed  infatuation  -  "Spring  everywhere  threatening  to 
open  them  both:  tense  in  that  unfurling  garden,  during  the 
long  exposure"  -  Bolster  gives  him  no  lover's  warmth;  she 
seems  most  comfortable  with  Alice  when  she  has  loosened 
his  grip,  blurred  his  focus.  As  Sue  Sinclair  says,  the  poet 
wants  to  "step  outside  the  frame  of  Wonderland";  to  do  this, 
she  must  block  Carroll's  possessiveness.  It  does  not  help 
for  Alice  to  be  so  -  apparently  -  docile. 

Indeed,  few  also-real  characters  in  literature 
respond  to  their  author's  bidding  as  willingly  as  Alice  Liddell 
drops  into  the  world  of  Lewis  Carroll  -  while  also  leaving  a 
dossier  of  a  real-world  life.  Although  the  title  White  Stone 
locates  the  book  by  implication  in  Dodgson's  diary 
shorthand  for  good  fortune,  the  poet  keeps  their  connection 
carefully  low-key.  Bolster  does  not  linger  long  in  Alice's 
deanery-garden  childhood  below  Carroll's  window.  She 
hurries  her  adolescence,  even  announces  her  first  period, 
possibly  because  Carroll  cannot  follow  her  across  that 
threshold.  White  Stone  may  be,  under  its  many  versions  of 
Alice's  life,  a  catalog  of  adolescent  potential  as  she 
physically  matures  -  like  "an  English  Landscape"  or  the 
Caterpillar's  chrysalis,  or  as  a  challenge  to  Victoria.  In  fact, 
teenage  themes  overshadow  those  of  maturity.  For  Bolster, 
Alice  is  the  girl  at  once  exploring  herself  and  rejecting 
maturity,  uncomfortable  in  her  own  body.  As  the  mouse- 
swimmer,  "she  cannot  sleep  for  the  hiss  of  her  breath  /  and 
for  who  she'll  become." 

Bolster,  who  knows  Alice  as  well  as  any  other  artist 
since  her  storyteller,  also  seems  to  share  with  Carroll  the 
will  to  possess  the  dreamchild.  Taking  up  Alice  most 
seriously  at  the  age  when  Carroll  put  her  down,  she  pursues 
her  with  equal  fervor,  and  afterward,  again  with  parallel 
emotions,  also  to  put  her  down.  Alice  takes  on  the  handled 
look  of  a  communal  nursery  doll.  She  faded  into  a  sort  of 
"pen-pal  to  whom  I  was  very  close  as  an  adolescent  and  young 
adult;  we  haven't  corresponded  for  years  . . .  but  the  bond  . . . 
(still  defines)  who  I  am."  Two  artists  share  one  pattern:  initial 
enthusiasm,  pursuit,  devotion,  a  sudden,  implicit  kind  of  no- 
fault  divorce,  followed  quickly  by  a  sort  of  nostalgia  close 
to  indifference,  gladly  embraced.  The  trappings  get  in  the 
way,  and  Bolster  never  really  accepts  Alice's  presence  as 
wholeheartedly  as  she  accepts  her  absence.  Carroll  only 
bonds  with  her  in  flashback,  the  scene  on  the  Isis.  Both  are 
careful  to  declare  it.  Alice  seems  to  divert  people  -  fictional 
or  not  -  out  of  their  present,  and  into  her  past  or  future. 
Elusive,  she  even  slides  out  of  Tenniel's  hands,  leaving  him 
to  pose  a  substitute  model  no  more  like  her  than  Thumbkin 
is  like  Ring  Man.* 

Bolster  could  only  have  withdrawn  from  Alice  for 
one  of  two  reasons:  either  one  outgrew  the  other,  or  one 
broke  off  with  the  other.  Given  that  Bolster  quite  openly 
takes  the  entire  range  of  Alice's  life  past  infancy  as  her 
subject,  it  ought  to  the  be  the  second;  and  given  that  Bolster's 
first  impulse  as  a  poet  is  to  (very  lightly)  embrace  and  (very 


delicately)  explore,  I  put  the  blame  on  Alice.  Consider: 
Alice's  only  known  intimate  is  a  cat.  Alice  has  no 
companions,  no  confidences,  no  cozy  chats.  Her 
conversations  are  no  more  intimate  than  mutual  cross- 
examination.  Most  she  breaks  off  herself.  As  her  own 
double,  she  boxes  her  own  ears.  The  Alice  which  Carroll 
created  is  a  loner,  an  abandoner,  always  on  the  move.  Her 
only  panic  in  either  book  occurs  in  the  White  Rabbit's 
dressing  room,  where  she  cannot  move  at  all.  Although  she 
leaves  the  impression  that  she  has  been  deserted,  she  does 
all  the  deserting.  It  may  be  Alice's  habit  of  emotional 
vanishing  that  the  Cheshire  Cat  represents  and  even  the 
White  Knight's  affection  cannot  overcome.  Though 
Stephanie  Bolster,  like  Carroll,  also  creates  fictions  to  catch 
her  heroine,  in  the  end  she  too  finds  that  Alice  has  vanished. 

III.  "Alice  -  Alice" 

"One  of  my  deepest  fears  is  of  being  watched 
from  a  perspective  exactly  like  my  own,  by 
someone  who  'sees  through  me'...  "  —  Bolster 

Though  Wonderland's  fantasy  inspires  some  of  her 
best  work,  Bolster  prefers  Alice  consistently  real,  from 
romantic  girlhood  -  when,  as  a  poem  shows,  she  may  have 
been  linked  with  a  prince  -  to  a  womanhood  of  lackluster 
respectability.  Though  working  at  Alice's  elbow  and  often 
with  her  own  key  emotions,  the  poet  still  manages  never  to 
intrude  or  pose  her  subject.  However,  she  does  take  great 
liberties  with  Alice's  backdrops  -  childbed,  marriage  bed, 
Dodgson's  funeral.  She  is  looking  for  a  path  out  of  herself. 
"I  wanted  to  write  about  someone  other  than  myself. . .  my 
own  inner  life  wasn't  sufficiently  valid  material  ...  the  kind 
of  material  I  wanted  to  publish  ...  I  saw  (in  Carroll's  Alice) 
a  spunky  young  girl  who  knew  her  mind  and  spoke  it." 
Eventually  Alice  came  to  be  all  of  "the  women  in  my  life, 
real  or  imagined. . .  the  historical  Alice  is  the  restrained  part 
of  myself,  the  part  that  wants  to  do  the  right  thing."  Bolster 
seems,  then,  to  have  used  Alice  as  a  mirror  to  groom  her 
own  possible  selves,  and  she  seems  most  convincing  where 
experiences  are  more  likely  shared.  Her  childbed  poem  - 
"three  sons  churned  like  butter  in  your  guts"  -  has  its 
unconvincing  moments. 

If  Bolster's  true  Alice  moves  away  from  her,  her 
pictures  remain  like  wallet-size  snapshots.  The  photography 
binding  Alice  to  Bolster  and  Carroll  is  one  of  White  Stone's 
major  themes.  Carroll  appears  as  his  own  subject;  young 
Alice  glowers  into  Carroll's  camera;  Bolster  poses  /  is  posed 
through  several  rites  of  passage.  Briefly,  the  poet  shows 
Carroll  groping  (maybe)  the  child  with  chemical-stained 
hands,  and  in  more  detail,  places  herself  and  Alice  together 
in  his  darkroom  developing  the  famous  "beggar  child" 
picture,  where  he  does  not  "unlatch  her  collar",  yet  finally 
dunks  Bolster  in  emulsifiers.  Julia  Margaret  Cameron's 
photographs,  which  first  gave  Bolster  a  sense  of  the  real 
Alice,  present  an  unraveling  matron,  her  hair  "brittle  /  as 
last  year's  nests".  The  camera  also  becomes  Alice's  trap: 
"Today  the  shutter's  snapped  you  in."  Gradually,  though, 
Carroll  the  manipulator  fades  as  Bolster's  own  authority 


grows  stronger,  the  camera  hides  more  than  it  shows,  and 
finally  eradicates  an  Alice  she  has  joined  in  old  age:  "(M)y 
aged  /  mind  elsewhere,  I  leave  the  lens  cap  on:  aim  at  you 
and  photograph  a  blackness  absolute." 

The  photography  motif  also  points  up  two  strengths 
surprising  in  a  first  book,  Bolster's  unity-in-flexibility,  and 
her  assured  management  of  her  speaking  self.  Commonly, 
she  speaks  directly  to  Alice,  though  on  the  other  hand,  she 
can  become  Alice  and  claim  her  central  position.  I  said 
earlier  -  one  of  the  fascinations  of  White  Stone  is  its  ready 
switches,  subject  to  object,  text  to  context.  The  necessary 
space  between  photographer  and  subject  also  allows  a 
discreet  control  while  screening  subject  from  intrusion.  Yet 
it  is  not  clear  whether  Bolster  realizes  that  however  well 
manipulated,  Alice  may  have  taken  charge,  a  presence 
outside  acute  fabrications,  and  that  picture-taking  allows 
control  to  flow  in  two  directions.  Carroll's  famous  "beggar 
child"  picture  suggests  a  covert,  seductive  control.  Which 
is  mistress? 

Another  striking  facet  of  her  book  of  poems  is  the 
gradual  move  from  photographs  to  portraits,  both  of  which 
are  Bolster's  specialties.  Early  in  the  book  photographs  are 
a  major  motif;  later  she  gradually  switches  to  portraits  which 
seem  to  have  been  painted,  and  which  include  richer  and 
richer  detail,  much  from  the  extra-Alice,  un-Alice  natural 
world:  Canadian  beaches  and  lakes  are  suggested,  stones 
throw  interesting  shadows.  Toward  the  end  of  the  book  Alice 
herself  has  fits  of  shrinking  and  disappearing  -  a  face  on  a 
milk  carton,  a  mouse  in  the  refrigerator.  Finally,  ending  the 
picture-within-picture  approach  of  photos  and  portraits, 
Bolster  breaks  off  her  scrutiny  of  Alice  as  Wonderland  did 

-  by  enlarging  her.  Alice  becomes  her  own  universe, 
complete  with  stars.  "This  big,  you  can't  be  photographed." 

After  White  Stone,  Stephanie  Bolster's  work  has 
taken  a  decided  turn  toward  the  textural,  the  here-and-now. 
Her  work  has  put  on  a  little  weight,  all  muscle.  Her  pictures 
have  become  glimpses,  and  sparseness  has  relaxed  into  the 
richly  commonplace:  blackberry  picking,  sucking  milk-wet 
fingers.  No  single  image  has  risen  to  rivet  her  imagination 

-  who  could  replace  Alice?  -  but  the  world  she  writes  in 
seems  far  more  burgeoning,  friendlier,  less  wary.  This  is 
the  world  of  her  second  book,  Two  Bowls  of  Milk. 

The  last  two  poems  of  White  Stone  tell  Alice 
goodbye.  "Portrait  of  Alice  as  Her  Own  Universe"  says  "Of 
the  advantages  to  death  and  myth,  /  this  you  have  most 
deserved:  space."  And  finally,  turning  Alice  into  a  black  hole, 
"Implode.  In  the  black  funnels  /  you  will  find  all  your 
variation."  In  the  end  Bolster  realizes  it  might  not  have  been 
Alice  after  all:  "I  let  her  history  fall  shut...  Victoria's  dead, 
this  isn't  England,  and  Alice  was  never  . . .  that  woman's  face, 
looming  in  my  dark  room." 

The  question  is:  if  it  wasn't  Alice,  who  was  it?  In 
all  seriousness,  Alice  must  be  the  queen  of  mistaken 
identity.  Part  of  her  leaves  her  own  story,  grows  up,  has 
adventures,  grows  and  grows,  invades  films,  fascinates  poets, 
painters,  people  on  the  hunt  for  meaning  -  yet  she  also 
remains  the  little  girl  just  stumbling  into  the  rabbit  hole.  I 


10 


think  the  answer  is  that,  in  any  form,  she  is  only  Lewis 
Carroll's  creation  -  more  accurately,  a  part  of  his  creation. 
She  is  a  living  mirror,  giving  back  all  our  images.  Alice  with 
her  cool  logic  is  a  single  rational  alien  always  on  the  move 
through  our  unreasonable  menagerie.  Wonderland's 
opposite,  she  can  reflect  it  but  can  never  release  its  terrible 
tensions.  Bolster,  who  is  "drawn  to  borders,  to  edges  where 
reality  transforms,"  found  in  Alice  a  balance  point  between 
mind  and  blankness  where  her  poetic  vision  could 
materialize;  but  not  take  root. 

The  final  truth  of  Alice  is  that  she  and  Wonderland 
mutually  repel.  Carroll  found  that  he  could  not  combine  his 
two  worlds  -  the  irrational  chaos,  the  clear  child-mind.  As 
Bolster  sees  it,  the  real  Alice  also  found  this  impossible. 
"The  Alice  we  know,  and  the  Alice  I  wrote  about,  is  multiple, 
and  yet,  ultimately,  a  vacuum.  She  is  the  'white  stone'  of  the 
book  title  -  undeniably  present,  but  opaque, 
indecipherable. . .  she's  a  kind  of  black  hole,  or  a  white  hole. . . 
absent,  and  replaced  by  a  made  thing. . .  The  Alice  that  comes 
down  to  us  is  the  Alice  of  our  own  making." 

Late  in  White  Stone,  Bolster  trades  in  the  trapped 
dreamchild  for  an  ordinary  woman.  The  final  poems  are  less 
mythic,  more  naturally  textured.  "Alice  Lake"  centers  on  a 
woman  swimming  rain-soaked  among  "anonymous  plants, 
tentative  and  skeletal,  rising  from  the  water."  Considering 
Bolster's  at  that  time  rather  austere  sparseness,  even  this 
touch  of  nature  amounts  to  a  lavish  excursion.  She  seeks  a 
new  solidity.  "The  stone  lays  its  shape  /  down  with  such 
assurance  /  you  could  weep."  Interestingly,  it  is  Nature  more 
than  Alice  which  seems,  at  the  end,  to  divide  Bolster  from 
Alice  and  reunite  her  with  herself,  "The  woman  (of  Alice 
Lake)  is  only  a  pair  of  arms  reaching  the  other  shore  and  I 
am  a  pair  of  eyes  touching  only  their  own  lids  and  this  rain." 
Only  as  Alice  (the  swimmer)  recedes,  can  the  poet  come  to 
terms  with  her  own  nature. 

Thus  this  prize-winning  and  striking  first  book 
becomes  a  collection  of  possible  /  possibly-counterfeit, 
Alices,  which  finally  draw  together  into  a  whole  woman, 
who  promptly  takes  her  leave.  Bolster  goes  from  seeking 
to  inventing  to  releasing  Alice,  and  much  of  her  achievement 
is  the  knowing  touch  which  allows  her  to  explore  her  subject 
throughout  all  these  phases,  all  without  trespassing  - 
"unlatching  her  collar".  The  development  of  this  unintruding 
scrutiny  is  the  most  interesting  quality  of  White  Stone. 

I  never  did  find  Alice;  I  stopped  looking.  Yet  Bolster 
provided  my  key,  not  as  much  in  her  attachment  (as  I  hoped) 
as  in  its  painless  breaking-off.  That  identified  the  one 
function  of  all  the  Alices  -  as  a  kind  of  gamepiece  channeling 
attention  by  eluding  it.  The  reality/fantasy  game  works  only 
because  Alice  is  always  between  moves.  It's  a  tired  old 
phrase,  but  Bolster  simply  outgrew  Alice:  "her  heart, 
unknown  to  me,  is  absent." 


^ 


iTipity 


eren 


"My  two  nieces  are  very  cute,  five  and  three... 
Those  are  their  names." 

~  guest  Bill  Braudis  on 
"Late  Night  with  Conan  O'Brien" 


^ 


Harold  Bloom,  in  discussing  Oscar  Wilde's  The 
Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  states  that  its  "...true 
affinities  are  with  Lewis  Carroll  and  with  Gilbert  and 
Sullivan..."  and  suggests  that  the  play  "is  best  read  in 
close  conjunction  with  the  Alice  books."  He 
concludes  his  essay  with  the  statement,  "If  there  is  an 
afterlife,  and  people  go  on  reading  in  it... I  would 
want  to  hear  Shakespeare  reading  aloud  from 
Through  the  Looking-Glass. 

How  to  Read  and  Why 
(Scribner,  2000) 


> 


Hypostasization:  The  variety  of  reification  that 
results  from  supposing  that  whatever  can  be  named 
or  conceived  abstractly  must  actually  exist.  When  (in 
Through  the  Looking-Glass),  his  Messenger 
declares  "I'm  sure  nobody  walks  much  faster  than  I 
do,"  the  White  King  hypostasizes  "Nobody"  by 
responding  that  "He  can't  do  that,  or  else  he'd  have 
been  here  first."  Such  philosophers  as  Plato,  Hegel 
and  Heidegger  are  sometimes  accused  of  similar 
flights  of  ontological  whimsy. 

~  Garth  Kemerling 

Philosophical  Dictionary 

(www.philosophypages.com) 


The  multitude  of  the  media's  quotations  from,  and 
references  to,  Carroll  in  the  recent  Bush/Gore 
"sustained  election"  Florida  farce  were  far  beyond 
measure;  the  most  appropriate  was  from  Chapter  IX 
of  Looking-Glass: 

'And  you  do  Addition''  the  White  Queen  asked- 
'What's  one  and  one  and  one  and  one  and  one  and 
one  and  one  and  one  and  one  and  one?' 

'I  don't  know,'  said  Alice.  'I  lost  count.' 


*  Thumbkin  and  Ring  Man  are  the  names  of  the  thumb  and  the 
ring  finger  in  a  children' s  rhyme  set  to  the  tune  of"Frere 
Jacques".  -  ed. 


11 


Leaves  from  the  Deanery  Garden 

Dear  Mr.  Carroll, 

Hello.  My  name  is  Alex.  I  am  9  years  old.  I  like  adventure 
and  war  books.  I  read  a  lot  and  had  never  read  Alice  in 
Wonderland  until  my  class  read  it  and  I  will  never  read  it 
again  in  my  whole  life. 

No  offense,  but  I  hated  that  book.  You  must  be  a  very  nice 
man  because  I've  heard  some  of  your  letters.  But  you  need 
a  bit  of  spice  in  your  book.  It  is  just  too  plain  for  me.  You 
need  to  have  more  adventure  in  your  stories.  Say  instead  of 
this:  "She  took  the  Orange  Marmalade.  It  was  empty.  She 
put  it  down."  It  should  be  like  this:  "She's  flying  down  the 
hole  at  breaknecking  speed  and  she  goes  through  the  floor 
of  the  hole  and  hits  a  wild  kind  of  spring  and  goes  flying 
into  the  sky."  That  is  what  I  think  is  descriptive. 

But  you  have  some  good  artists.  I've 
got  to  give  you  credit  for  that.  My 
favorites  are  Anthony  Browne, 
Angel  Dominiquez,  and  Helen 
Oxenbury.  Everyone  in  my  class 
except  me  likes  your  book.  We  are 
all  going  to  do  illustrations  for  your 
book.  I  really  look  forward  to  doing 
this  because  I  like  drawing. 

Good  bye  and  don't  forget,  I  don't 
like  your  book. 

Sorrily, 

Alex 

[The  above  is  a  letter  from  an 
activity  Monica  Edinger  uses  in  a 
unit,  based  on  AW,  which  she 
teaches  at  The  Dalton  School  in 
New  York,  and  is  in  her  book/CD 
Seeking  History:  Teaching  with 
Primary  Sources  in  Grades  4-6 
(Heinemann,  2000),  0-325-00265- 
7,  $22  -  order  from  www.heinemann.com.] 

May  I  share  some  thoughts  regarding  our  [opera  in  progress] 
"Alice",  and  our  including  the  character  of  Lewis  Carroll, 
playing  not  only  himself,  but  both  the  White  Knight 
(obviously)  in  Act  Two,  and  the  Gryphon  (less  obviously) 
in  Act  One? 

Did  you  ever  wonder  about  the  author's  spelling  of  the  word 
"gryphon?"  When  the  adequate  spelling  would  normally  be 
"griffin",  this  strange  choice  stimulated  my  curiosity. 
Without  having  the  Annotated  Alice  of  Gardner  to  check,  I 
looked  elsewhere  to  a  source  from  1894.  What  reference 
might  Dodgson/Carroll  have  had  in  his  mind  to  employ  this 
spelling?  This  citation  is  from  Brewer's  The  Dictionary  of 
Phrase  and  Fable  (p.558): 


"Gryphon  (in  Orlando  Furioso,),  son  ofOlivero  and 
Sigismunda,  brother  of  Aquilant,  in  love  with 
Origilla,  who  plays  him  false.  He  was  called  White 
from  his  armour,  and  his  brother  Black.  He 
overthrew  the  eight  champions  of  Damascus  in  the 
tournament  given  to  celebrate  the  king 's  wedding- 
day.  While  asleep  Martano  steals  his  armour,  and 
goes  to  the  King  Noradino  to  receive  the  meed  of 
high  deeds.  In  the  meantime  Gryphon  awakes,  finds 
his  armour  gone,  is  obliged  to  put  on  Martano 's, 
and,  being  mistaken  for  the  coward,  is  hooted  and 
hustled  by  the  crowd.  He  lays  about  stoutly,  and 
kills  many.  The  king  comes  up,  finds  out  the  mistake, 
and  offers  his  hand,  which  Gryphon,  like  a  true 
knight,  receives.  He  joined  the  army  of 
Charlemagne.  " 

Brewer  also  cites  a 
spelling  of  "griffon"  (as 
well  as  alternatives, 
"griffen"  or  "griffin")  for 
the  offspring  of  the  lion 
and  the  eagle.  The  creature 
""kept  guard  over  hidden 
treasures." 

So  there  may  have  been, 
with  the  awareness  that 
Dodgson/Carroll  was  so 
well  versed  in  things 
folkloric  and  English  and 
mythic,  some  double 
entendre  in  the  employ- 
ment of  the  spelling,  for 
Gryphon  also  more  than 
hints  of  the  White  Knight, 
as  above.  This  character 
may  symbolize  therefore 
Carroll  in  another  White 
Knight's  guise,  all  the  while 
valorously  guarding 
"hidden"  treasure. 

Notice  in  Orlando  Furioso  that  his  love  "plays  him  false," 
as  did  all  the  children  in  whom  Carroll  invested  himself,  by 
their  growing  into  adulthood.  "Who  are  you,  Alice?"  as  he 
wrote,  may  have  been  much  more  of  a  query  than  we  have 
come  to  think. 

If  this  is  mere  circumstance  between  a  Gryphon  and  White 
Knight,  then  I  am  impressed  in  the  serendipities  of  life,  and 
if  it  is  his  intended  reference,  then  I  am  impressed  again 
and  again  with  the  intellectual  connections  that  seemed  to 
rule  his  imagination  and  art.  Either  way,  it  is  most  interesting, 
don't  you  think? 

Gary  Bachlund 


12 


[Gryphon  derives  from  the  Greek  ypik|j,  whose  adjectival 
form  yptJiTos  means  "curved,  especially  in  the  nose  or 
beak",  hence  ypv-ndtrds  (used  in  Aristophanes),  a  kind 
of  griffin] 

I  was  surprised  to  see  in  your  excellent  Fall  2000  issue  that 
John  Tufail  continues  to  think  that  Tenniel  did  not  draw  the 
Knave  of  Hearts  in  his  frontispiece  to  AW,  and  on  an  inside 
illustration.  Those  little  clubs  on  the  Knave  are  traditional 
decorations  on  the  Jack  of  Heart's  tunic  as  he  appears  on 
English  and  American  playing  cards  (enclosed).  They  ap- 
pear only  on  the  Jack  of  Hearts,  so  there  is  no  question  that 
Tenniel  was  drawing  the  Knave  of  Hearts.  I  suspect  that  what 
seem  to  be  little  clubs  are  intended  to  be  clover.  I  sent  a 
note  on  this  to  Bandersnatch. 

Martin  Gardner 

Gardner's  note  was  printed  in  Bandersnatch  108,  along 
with  comments  by  others.  Dr.  Tufail  responded  in  109. 


Having  just  finished  KL  64,  I  congratulate  you  for  a  mag- 
nificent production.  Your  recent  issues  have  been  splendid. 

However,  as  an  old  curmudgeon  whose  history  includes  for- 
mal training  in  psychology,  psychiatry,  thanatology,  logic 
and  literature,  I  cannot  refrain  from  believing  that  Dr.  Chloe 
Nichols'  "Goldfish,  Death  and  the  Maiden"  is  tilting  at  wind- 
mills. Dr.  Tufail's  essay  in  the  same  issue,  "Language  and 
Truth  in  AW  repeats  many  of  the  same  formalistic  errors. 
One  wonders  if  there  will  ever  be  an  end  to  psychologists' 
efforts  to  juggle  facts  to  fit  preconceived  theories? 

In  contrast,  Jonathan  Dixon's  "Dodgson's  Adventures  in 
Therapy"  that  follows  takes  observable  facts,  fits  them  into 
a  theory  and  then  tests  it.  His  paper  is  therefore  to  be  highly 
commended. 

I  suppose  that  we  must  accept  the  ridiculous  along  with  the 
sublime  in  the  guises  of  fairness  or  comprehensiveness.  To 
publish  pseudo-science  or  voodoo  philosophies  seems  ter- 
ribly wasteful. 

Sandor  Burstein 

President  emeritus,  L.C.S.N.A. 


i  work  for  a  small  radio  station  and  we  are  doing  a  repot 
about  Louis  Carroll,  but  i  need  to  know,  hoe  "Lutwidge"  is 
correctly  pronounced!  Can  you  help  me? 

Rahmun  (via  eMail) 

My  word.  Where  to  begin? 


An  Exchange 

To:  Writers  &  Research  Group,  "Jeopardy!" 

On  the  show  which  aired  last  Friday,  1 5  September,  in  the 
category  "Brit  Lit"  there  was  a  question:  "Referring  to  his 
'Alice'  books,  this  author  said  Tm  afraid  I  didn't  mean  any- 
thing but  nonsense."'  The  given  answer  was  Lewis  Carroll, 
but  unfortunately  the  "question"  was  not  correct.  The  quoted 
line  was  not  referring  to  his  Alice  books,  but  rather  to  his 
great  nonsense  poem  "The  Hunting  of  the  Snark"  (1876). 

The  well-known  line  is  from  an  letter  dated  1 8  August  1884 
and  addressed  to  Miss  Rachel  Lowrie  (and  her  siblings). 
You  will  find  it  printed  in  The  Letters  of  Lewis  Carroll,  ed. 
Morton  Cohen  and  Roger  Lancelyn  Green,  Oxford  Univer- 
sity Press,  1979,  vol.  I  pp.  547  -  9.  The  exact  line  is  "As  to 
the  meaning  of  the  Snark?  I'm  very  much  afraid  I  didn't 
mean  anything  but  nonsense!" 

As  you  can  imagine,  I  am  a  faithful  watcher  and  admirer  of 
your  show! 

Respectfully, 

Mark  Burstein 
V.P.,  L.C.S.N.A. 

Dear  Mr.  Burstein, 

Thank  you  for  your  information  about  Lewis  Carroll's 
quotation... We  especially  appreciate  the  primary  documen- 
tation that  shows  Carroll  referring  to  "The  Hunting  of  the 
Snark"  rather  than  to  the  Alice  books,  as  we  had  stated  on 
the  air.  As  we  prepare  roughly  fifteen  thousand  clues  a  year, 
we  naturally  have  to  rely  on  secondary  sources,  which  in 
this  case  led  us  astray.  Next  time  we  run  into  a  Carroll-re- 
lated conundrum,  rest  assured  that  we  will  call  on  your  ex- 
pertise beforehand. 

We  hope  you  will  continue  to  watch  the  show. 

Sincerely, 

The  Jeopardy!  Writing  Staff 


13 


Dodgson,  Docherty  and  MacDonald's  Lilith 
Karoline  Leach 

It  has  been  pointed  out  by  others  that  there  are  con- 
nections with  Charles  Dodgson  built  into  the  texts  of  sev- 
eral of  George  MacDonald's  novels  -particularly  his  strang- 
est and  most  allegorical,  Lilith  (1895). 

In  a  sense  this  isn't  particularly  surprising  since 
the  two  men  were  for  a  time  very  close  friends.  Several  of 
MacDonald's  stories  from  the  1860s  seem  to  echo 
Dodgson's  serious  poetry  from  the  same  time:  the  dream- 
worlds and  alternative  realities  of  Phantastes  and  The  Por- 
tent recall  Dodgson's  'Stolen  Waters'  and  'Faces  in  the  Fire' 
as  well  as  the  Alice  and  Sylvie  and  Bruno  books. 

Like  Anodos  (hero  of  Phantastes),  the  protago- 
nist of  'Stolen  Waters'  is  seduced  by  afemmefatale  and 
awakened  to  her  true  nature  by  a  dawn  transformation.  The 
seductress  in  'Stolen  Waters'  has  'A  cold  cold  heart  of 
stone';  Anodos  asks  of  the  Alder-maiden  'How  can  she  be 
so  beautiful  and  have  no  heart?' 

Later  in  the  poem,  the  lines  'If  this  be  madness, 
better  so/Far  better  to  be  mad'  echo  Duncan  Campbell  in 
The  Portent:  '"Rather  let  me  be  mad  still,"  I  said,  "if  mad  I 
am;  and  so  dream  on  that  I  have  been  blessed'";  and  later 
Duncan  uses  the  fire  as  a  focus  while  'let {ting}  his  thoughts 
roam  at  will',  very  much  as  the  narrator  of  'Faces  in  the 
Fire'  does. 

The  complexity  and  closeness  of  aspects  of  this 
'cross-pollination'  between  MacDonald's  work  and 
Dodgson's  are  undeniably  present  in  Lilith.  Most  obviously, 
there  is  the  looking-glass  as  entry-point  to  another  world, 
but  there  are  other  parallels  with  different  pieces  of 
Dodgson's  work. 

The  child-mother,  Lona,  in  Lilith  is  almost  an  iden- 
tical being  to  the  child-mother  Sylvie  in  Dodgson's  novel 
Sylvie  and  Bruno  (1889).  Unlike  Lona,  Sylvie  has  only  one 
'child'  -  her  brother  Bruno,  but  her  role  as  a  kind  of  univer- 
sal symbol  of  angelic  self-sacrificial  caring  is  entirely  the 
same.  Sylvie  is  a  quasi-stepdaughter  of  the  comically  evil 
Tabikat,  while  Lona  is  the  daughter  of  the  seriously  evil 
Lilith. 

Then  there  is  the  fluidity  of  identity  in  Lilith  -  again 
a  repeated  theme  in  Dodgson's  work:  the  loss  of  identity 
and  search  for  meaning.  Vane's  journey  is  perhaps  an  adult 
version  of  Alice's  own:  MacDonald  invests  the  experience 
with  a  moral  meaning  that  was  anathema  to  the  Dodgson 
who  wrote  Alice,  yet  in  one  draft  of  Lilith,  the  Raven  de- 
mands that  Vane  identify  himself  in  words  that  almost  para- 
phrase the  caterpillar:  'Tell  me,  then,  who  you  are'.1 

Was  MacDonald  deliberately  adopting  symbolic 
images  like  the  mirror  and  the  child-mother  from  his  friend's 
internal  pantheon? 

In  his  1995  book  The  Literary  Products  of  the 
Charles  Dodgson-George  MacDonald  Friendship,  John 
Docherty  has  suggested  that  these  'coincidences'  are  de- 
liberate. Indeed  he  goes  further  and  proposes  that  in  some 
sense  MacDonald  is  deliberately  homaging  or  satirising  not 
only  Dodgson's  work  but  also  his  life,  and  indeed  that 


Dodgson  returned  the  compliment,  doing  the  same  for 
MacDonald  in  his  own  books.  This  is  a  radical  suggestion, 
but  one  that  has  certain  things  in  its  favour. 

Look  for  example  at  the  central  male  character  in 
Lilith  (the  male  version  of  'Alice'  if  you  like),  known  by 
the  single  name  of  'Vane'.  He  is  described  by  MacDonald 
as  an  Oxford  man,  with  a  profoundly  sceptical,  self-centred 
approach  to  life.  In  the  character's  own  words: 

"I  had  myself . . .  devoted  a  good  deal  of  my  time, 
though,  I  confess,  after  a  somewhat  desultory  fashion,  to 
the  physical  sciences.  It  was  chiefly  the  wonder  they  woke 
that  drew  me.  I  was  constantly  seeing,  and  on  the  outlook  to 
see,  strange  analogies,  not  only  between  the  facts  of  differ- 
ent sciences  of  the  same  order,  or  between  physical  and 
metaphysical  facts,  but  between  physical  hypotheses  and 
suggestions  glimmering  out  of  the  metaphysical  dreams  into 
which  I  was  in  the  habit  of  falling.  I  was  at  the  same  time 
much  given  to  a  premature  indulgence  of  the  impulse  to 
turn  hypothesis  into  theory..." 

This  certainly  offers  what  would  be  a  very  good 
description  of  an  aspect  of  Charles  Dodgson's  state  of  mind 
-  particularly  as  a  younger  man. 

Like  Vane  in  an  earlier  draft,  Dodgson  spent  some 
time  trying  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  fourth  dimension 
mathematically.  Like  Vane,  he  was  eternally  interested  in 
spiritual  and  metaphysical  problems,  with  a  pronounced  ten- 
dency to  try  to  use  scientific  methods  to  deal  with  non- 
scientific  things  (for  example  his  attempts  in  later  life  to 
prove  logically  the  probability  of  Christ's  divinity!). 

It  is  quite  tempting,  on  this  alone,  to  think  that 
MacDonald  may  have  modelled  Vane  at  least  in  part  on  his 
Oxford  friend  Charles  Dodgson,  with  his  curious  blend  of 
mysticism  and  mathematical  exactness.  Indeed  in  this  con- 
text Docherty  quotes  a  cryptic  little  passage  from  one  of 
the  many  drafts  of  Lilith: 

In  'Lilith  B'  {second  of  MacDonald's  six  manu- 
script drafts},  Vane  states  that  the  'one  reader  for  whom'  he 
is  writing  is  'a  college  friend. . .  who  will  himself  know  that 
he  and  no  other  is  intended,  for  there  can  be  no  mistake'.2 

Docherty  infers  the  probability  that  this  'college 
friend'  is  MacDonald's  allusion  to  Dodgson,  who  would 
indeed  know  that  'he  and  no  other  was  intended'. 

There  is  only  one  problem  with  Docherty 's  at- 
tempts to  relate  Lilith's  underlying  themes  and  allegorical 
spiritual  journeys  to  Dodgson's  own  life:  the  life-experi- 
ence of  Vane  as  portrayed  by  MacDonald  just  does  not  of- 
fer any  real  resemblance  to  the  traditional  interpretation  of 
Lewis  Carroll's  existence. 

Vane  is  a  man  in  spiritual  crisis.  Indeed  the  whole 
novel  is  a  prolonged  allegory  of  his  journey  from  helpless 
selfish  confusion  into  some  kind  of  qualified  spiritual  re- 
birth. He  is  tormented  by  his  own  warring  passions;  he  falls 
in  love  with  the  evil  seductive  demon  Lilith  and  longs  for 
her  as  a  companion,  even  though  she  drains  him  nightly  of 
his  life-blood.  He  is  nearly  destroyed  by  his  own  need  of 
her  and  his  concomitant  spiritual  blindness,  and  he  has  to 
wander  through  a  wild  landscape  of  moral  symbolisms,  be- 


14 


ing  tested  and  usually  found  wanting,  before  finding  even- 
tual, if  qualified,  salvation  in  the  love  of  the  child-woman 
Lona. 

Where  are  the  parallels  here  to  Carroll's  alleged 
'non-life'? 

Docherty  tries  to  find  them  in  the  single  emotional 
experience  that  is  traditionally  supposed  to  have  entered 
Dodgson's  inner  landscape  -  his  supposed  passion  for  Alice 
Liddell.  But  his  attempts  to  do  so  are  strained,  because  there 
is  no  actual  prima  facie  evidence  anywhere  to  show  that 
Dodgson  ever  nurtured  such  a  passion.  Docherty  (like  many 
biographers  before  and  after  him)  is  forced  into  guessing 
about  what  Dodgson  thought  of  the  girl,  and  why  she  'must 
have  been'  important  to  him.  This  is  not  a  good  basis  for 
any  analysis. 

Docherty  does  his  best.  He  argues  that  Lona  the 
child-woman  is  Alice:  'She  {Lona/Lilia}  was  to  him 
{MacDonald}  almost  as  much  a  living  example  of  ideal 
asexual  femininity  as  Alice  Liddell  had  been  to  Dodgson',3 
but  he  doesn't  really  succeed,  because  this  perforce  narrow 
and  immature  emotional  range  cannot  encompass  the  peaks 
and  troughs  of  Vane's  wholly  adult  experience.  Lilith  is  not 
to  be  decanted  into  Alice,  as  a  quart  will  never  go  into  a  pint 
glass. 

In  order  to  find  the  connections  he  is  looking  for 
between  Vane  and  Dodgson  and  Alice  Liddell,  Docherty  is 
forced  into  rather  crazy  quests  for  cryptic  word  games: 
'An  ox  is  the  creature  most  like  a  bull,  and  since 
Dodgson  worked  at  Oxford  it  as  just  possible  that 
MacDonald  is  alluding  {in  the  city-name  Bulika}  to 
Dodgson's  image  of  himself  as  a  Mock  Turtle  -  i.e. 
like  a  bull,  but  only  a  half-creature,  and  emotionally 
castrated.'4 

In  analyses  like  this  poor  Dodgson  is  always  'cas- 
trated', and  no  reason  is  ever  given  for  the  a  priori  assump- 
tion that  he  was  morally,  spiritually  or  physically  less  than  a 
man.  Sentences  like  'Mrs  Liddell... apparently  felt  it  nec- 
essary that  her  daughters  should  be  brought  up  to  appear 
intellectually  stupid. . .  Dodgson  was  moved  to  help  the  girls, 
particularly  Alice',  and  'One  of  Dodgson's  primary  objec- 
tives was  to  rescue  Alice  Liddell  from  the  treacle-well  of 
her  own  self-indulgence'5  seem  to  take  us  right  into  the  crazy 
heart  of  Freudian  analysis,  where  inference  is  built  on  noth- 
ing but  inference,  for  there  is  not  a  shred  of  evidence  any- 
where that  Dodgson  ever  felt  the  need  to  rescue  Alice 
Liddell  from  anything  at  all. 

None  of  this  inspires  much  confidence  in 
Docherty's  theory,  and  the  temptation  is  to  dismiss  it  out  of 
hand.  But  the  irony  is  that,  if  Docherty  had  not  confined 
himself  to  the  'Alice-centred'  interpretation  of  Dodgson's 
biography,  he  would  have  found  there  truly  is  an  abundance 
of  evidence  to  support  his  idea.  As  I  have  tried  to  show  else- 
where,6 the  image  of  Dodgson  as  a  man  focused  emotion- 
ally and  artistically  on  Alice  is  almost  entirely  unsupported 
by  any  known  evidence.  It  is  a  profound,  if  very  popular, 
falsehood. 

Carroll-scholarship  is  in  the  grip  of  a  curious  and 


unique  difficulty.  The  discipline  has  become  absorbed  by  a 
largely  mythic  and  baseless  image  of  'Lewis  CarrolP,  an 
image  so  powerful  that  it  has  obscured  the  verifiable  reali- 
ties of  the  man's  life  to  a  truly  extraordinary  degree. 

For  so  many  years  the  certain  images  of  'Carroll' 
have  become  so  repeatedly  aired  and  so  widely  accepted  as 
fact  that  it  is  difficult  for  any  of  us  to  believe  that  they  are 
anything  but  true. 

Where  would  our  concept  of  'Carroll'  be  without 
the  mental  pictures  of  the  shy  prim  man,  avoidant  of  adult 
society,  regretting  the  maturing  of  his  'little  friends'?  Who 
is  Carroll  if  not  the  quiet  clergyman  who  adored  Alice 
Liddell  and  spent  his  life  regretting  her  vanishing  from  his 
lonely  life? 

These  images  are  not  simply  widely  held,  they  are 
fixed  and  solid  cultural  truths  -  collective  beliefs  of  con- 
siderable significance  and  power;  reference  points  in  hu- 
man experience. 

Yet  they  are  false. 

They  are  a  blend  of  fantasy  and  cosmetic  over-sim- 
plification. They  are  myths  in  the  true  power  of  that  word: 
invented  cultural  beliefs  of  great  emotional  and  psychologi- 
cal meaning.  They  are  important,  they  tell  us  things  about 
ourselves  -  but  they  tell  us  next  to  nothing  about  Charles 
Dodgson. 

Recognising  this  and  dealing  with  it  is  a  large  prob- 
lem for  contemporary  Carroll  scholarship.  It  needs  to  be 
done,  and  urgently,  for  at  present  the  myth  lies  over  the  facts, 
obscuring  and  distorting  them,  making  rational  analysis  very 
difficult  if  not  impossible.  We  need  to  go  back  to  the 
sources,  and  study  them  without  preconceptual  images  of 
'Carroll'  in  our  minds. 

Beneath  this  ice-film  of  our  own  imaginal  creation, 
Dodgson's  reality  flows  fast  and  free  like  a  winter  river.  If 
we  punch  through  we  can  find  him,  almost  touch  him.  He 
speaks  in  his  letters,  his  diaries,  his  fiction,  and  the  story  he 
tells  of  his  own  life  is  often  far  from  our  own  familiar 
'truths'.  We  just  have  to  learn  to  listen  to  him  and  tune  out 
the  noise  of  our  own  belief.  Until  we  do  this,  Carroll  schol- 
arship will  remain  mired  in  the  mistakes  of  its  own  past, 
condemned,  as  someone  said,  to  repeat  them. 

When  we  see  how  the  power  of  this  mythic  'biog- 
raphy' has  impacted  upon  the  work  of  one  scholar,  we  can 
recognise  the  strength  of  its  continued  distorting  effect  on 
the  discipline  as  a  whole.  It's  an  effect  that  should  never  be 
underestimated. 

John  Docherty  has  had  the  great  insight  and  imagi- 
nation to  see  the  wide-ranging  connections  between 
MacDonald  and  Dodgson.  He  has  recognised  the  fascinat- 
ing possibility  that  Lilith  may  be  on  one  level  a  kind  of  bio- 
graphical essay  on  Dodgson's  spiritual  experience.  Yet  the 
gap  between  the  tormented  'Vane'  of  MacDonald's  novel 
and  the  image  of  quiet  Mr  Dodgson  has  proved  a  major  prob- 
lem for  him  and  he  has  undermined  some  of  his  best  work 
in  an  attempt  to  'interpret'  Lilith  as  an  allegory  on  the  mythic 
relationship  between  Dodgson  and  Alice  Liddell.  He  is  so 
constrained  by  this  that  he  is  even  forced  to  omit  large 


15 


chunks  of  Lilith  's  most  obvious  symbolism  -  for  example 
the  sexual  temptation  promised  by  the  title  character  -  as 
being  simply  too  inconsistent  with  the  Dodgson-Alice  story. 

Yet  ironically  he  had  no  need  to  bother  with  this. 
For  in  reality,  beneath  the  ice-film,  Dodgson's  life  did  not 
revolve  merely  around  Alice  Liddell  as  Dreamchild  and  so 
much  biography  claims,  and  there  is  no  requirement  to  find 
all  the  solutions  to  his  emotional  experience  in  her.  In  real- 
ity she  was  a  mere  part  of  a  rich,  curious  and  secretive  ex- 
istence, which  has  yet  to  be  even  sketchily  mapped  out. 

The  real  Dodgson  did  indeed  go  through  just  such 
a  profound  spiritual  nightmare  as  that  reflected  in  Lilith, 
and  at  the  very  time  that  MacDonald  first  entered  his  life. 
He  even  expressed  it  in  almost  identical  language  to  that 
employed  in  Lilith.  And  if  Docherty  had  been  able  to  know 
about  this  and  incorporate  it  into  his  book  it  would  have 
increased  the  power  of  his  argument  by  a  considerable  mar- 
gin, yet  at  the  time  that  he  was  writing,  it  was  still  buried  in 
the  snows. 

Throughout  the  1 860s,  as  I  have  shown  in  my  book, 
Dodgson  was  in  spiritual  turmoil;  living  a  life  which  he  fre- 
quently described  as  both  Godless  and  selfish.  His  faith  was 
'failing'.  He  tried  to  pray  but  seemed  to  'beat  the  air'.  When 
he  preached  from  the  pulpit  he  felt  he  was  a  hypocrite, 
'preaching  to  others,  myself  a  castaway'.7  In  other  words, 
as  Morton  Cohen  had  the  insight  to  recognise,  'the  man  is 
in  trouble'.8 

His  taking  of  the  diaconate  in  1861,  and  rejection 
of  the  priesthood  the  following  year,  were  both  done  in  a 
state  of  such  profound  confusion  and  apparent  self-loath- 
ing as  well  as  self-deception  that  if  the  honest,  rigorous  and 
devout  George  MacDonald  ever  knew  about  it  he  would 
surely  have  feared  for  the  man's  soul  and  wondered  where 
on  earth  his  life  was  taking  him.  And  after  this,  between 
1 862  and  1 868,  while  he  was  closest  to  the  MacDonald  fam- 
ily, Dodgson  first  sank  further  into  sporadic,  near-suicidal 
misery  and  self-loathing,  and  then  began  a  definite,  but  rather 
odd  and  qualified  spiritual  recovery. 

At  this  point  we  should  look  at  two  of  Dodgson's 
love  poems,  'Stolen  Waters'  (1862)  and  'The  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death'  (1868). 

These  two  poems  tell  a  virtually  identical  story  of 
a  man  who  is  lured  from  righteousness  and  seduced  into 
sinful  'pleasure'. 

'Sweet  is  the  stolen  draught'  she  said: 

'Hath  sweetness  stint  or  measure? 

Pleasant  the  secret  hoard  of  bread: 

What  bars  us  from  our  pleasure?' 

'Yes,  take  we  pleasure  while  we  may,' 

I  heard  myself  replying. 

In  the  red  sunset  far  away 

My  happier  life  was  dying. 

('Waters') 

The  spells  that  bound  me  with  a  chain 

Sin's  stern  behest  to  do, 

Till  Pleasure's  self,  invoked  in  vain, 

A  heavy  burden  grew. . . 


('Valley') 


('Waters') 


He  becomes  almost  suicidal  - 
Yea,  when  one's  heart  is  laid  asleep, 
What  better  than  to  die? 

I  heard  a  whisper  cold  and  clear 
'That  is  the  gate  of  Death.' 


'Oh  well',  it  said  'beneath  yon  pool, 
In  some  still  cavern  deep, 
The  fevered  brain  might  slumber  cool, 
The  eyes  forget  to  weep.' 

('Valley') 
-  and  then  finds  salvation  through  a  rediscovery  of 
childhood  innocence. 

I  heard  a  clear  voice  singing: 

Be  as  a  child  - 

So  shalt  thou  sing  for  very  joy  of  breath 

('Waters') 
Soft  fell  the  dying  ray 
On  two  fair  children,  side  by  side, 
That  rested  from  their  play. 

Blest  day!  Then  first  I  heard  the  voice 

That  since  has  oft  beguiled 

These  eyes  from  tears,  and  bid  rejoice 

This  heart  with  anguish  wild. 

('Valley') 

The  second  poem,  'Valley',  takes  the  story  slightly 
further  than  the  first.  In  this  the  man  falls  in  love  with  and 
later  marries  his  innocent  rescuer,  a  child-woman  who  bears 
him  a  son  and  then  dies. 

Though  parted  from  my  aching  sight 

Like  homeward-speeding  dove, 

She  passed  into  the  perfect  light 

That  floods  the  world  above; 

Yet  our  twin  spirits,  well  I  know  - 

Though  one  abide  in  pain  below  - 

Love,  as  in  summers  long  ago, 

And  evermore  shall  love. 

The  repetition  shows  us  how  haunted  Dodgson  was 
during  this  period  of  spiritual  and  emotional  turmoil.  It  is 
indeed  Dodgson  'revealing  his  inner  self,  his  biting  fears'.9 

And  what  fears?  Temptation  in  the  form  of  a  pow- 
erful seductress,  sinful  copulation,  despair  and  confusion 
and  a  long  exile  in  a  landscape  of  spiritual  despair,  until  even- 
tual salvation  is  brought  to  him  by  the  love  of  a  child-woman. 

We  have  encountered  all  this  before  haven't  we? 
Dodgson's  poetry  and  his  private  confessions  of  sin  take  us 
on  an  almost  identical  moral  journey  to  that  MacDonald 
detailed  in  Lilith. 

Dodgson  and  Vane  are  indeed  spiritual  brothers, 
and  the  possibility  that  MacDonald  quite  deliberately  mod- 
elled the  second  upon  the  first  becomes  more  than  plau- 
sible. The  buried  reality  of  Dodgson's  life  offers  support 


16 


for  an  hypothesis  that  viewing  from  the  traditional  perspec- 
tive would  render  almost  laughable. 

Surely  there  is  a  lesson  here  for  all  of  us. 

The  distorting  effect  of  this  great  mythic  'Carroll' 
presence  cannot  be  overestimated.  It  has  dominated  the 
scholarship  for  so  long  that  it  is  has  become  all  but  uncon- 
querable. Almost  every  word  of  biography  and  literary  criti- 
cism ever  written  has  been  conceived  and  born  in  the  shadow 
of  that  image.  Deconstructing  this  great  looming  mass  of 
ink  and  certitude  is  no  small  challenge.  New  research  is 
beginning  to  try,  but  it's  a  large  job,  and  there  is  resistance 
to  it  on  all  sides. 

I  hope  this  mood  will  pass,  and  that  fine  scholars 
like  Docherty,  Cohen,  and  others  will  see  the  discovery  of 
this  'new  Dodgson'  as  an  opportunity  -  maybe  also  as  a  kind 
of  duty. 

The  man  didn't  ask  to  be  'misremembered'.  He  may 
have  preferred  not  to  be  remembered  at  all.  He  may  have 
hated  to  be  'known  indiscriminately  by  what  he  could  not 
know'.  So,  if  we  have  to  publish  his  diaries  and  scour  his 
letters,  we  have  a  huge  responsibility  to  try  and  tell  as  much 
of  the  truth  as  possible.  He's  served  his  time  as  an  icon  for 
other  people's  aspirations.  Let's  allow  him  to  begin  speak- 
ing for  himself. 


References 

Carroll,  Lewis  (1933)  Collected  Works.  London:  Nonesuch 

Cohen,  Morton  N.  (1995)  Lewis  Carroll:  a  Biography.  London: 

Macmillan 

Docherty,  John  (1995)  The  Literary  Products  of  the  Lewis 

Carroll-George  MacDonald  Friendship.  New  York:  Edwin 

Mellen  Press 

Leach,  Karoline  (1999)  In  the  Shadow  of  the  Dreamchild:  a  new 

understanding  of  Lewis  Carroll.  London:  Peter  Owen 

MacDonald,  George  ( 1 895)  Lilith 

MacDonald,  George  (1864)  The  Portent 

MacDonald,  George  (1 858)  Phantastes 

Wakeling,  Edward  (ed.)  (1993-9)  Lewis  Carroll's  Diaries,  vols.  I- 

V.  Luton:  White  Stone  Publishing 

Notes 


1. 

MacDonald  1 895  :ch.  2 

2. 

Docherty  1995: 355 

3. 

ibid.:  361 

4. 

ibid.:3&\ 

5. 

ibid:S5,U6 

6. 

Leach  1999 

7. 

Wakeling  (ed.)  1993-9,  IV:  108,  V:  152, 165 

8. 

Cohen  1995: 225 

9. 

Cohen  1995: 224 

17 


On  Possible  Bases  of  a  Number  System 

Francine  F.  Abeles 

In  a  recent  article  in  The  Carrollian,  no.5  (Spring 
2000),  "Alice's  Mathematics",  an  interpretation  of  a  passage 
in  'The  Pool  of  Tears'  chapter  involves  the  possible  bases 
of  a  number  system.  To  explain  the  passage  'Let  me  see: 
four  times  five  is  twelve,  and  four  time  six  is  thirteen,  and 
four  time  seven  is  -  oh  dear!  I  shall  never  get  to  twenty  at 
that  rate!',  Kenneth  S.  Salins  invokes  both  positive  and 
negative  numbers  and  zero  as  bases  of  a  number  system. 
But,  contrary  to  the  White  Queen's  belief  in  impossible 
things,  as  many  as  six  before  breakfast,  we  must  register 
disbelief  at  the  idea  of  a  continuum  of  number  bases.1 

In  a  positional  number  system  like  our  decimal 
system  (L.  decern,  Gk  Seica:  ten),  any  positive  integer,  e.g. 
254,  can  be  written  in  this  way: 

254  =  2xl02  +  5*10l+4xl0° 

What  is  important  is  that  the  meaning  of  the  digits 
2,  5,  and  4  depends  on  their  position  in  the  hundreds,  tens, 
and  units  places.  Using  this  notation,  we  can  represent  any 
nonnegative  integer  z  uniquely  in  the  form: 

z  =  an  10"  +  a„-i  10""1  +  •  •  •  +  «,  10  +  a0 ,  and  use  the  dig- 
its anan_x . .  .axa0  as  the  symbol  for  z.  (1) 

We  can  extend  these  ideas  to  any  base  which  is  a 
positive  integer  greater  than  one  by  stating  the  following 
theorem  whose  content  was  known  to  Blaise  Pascal  (1623- 
1662): 

Each  nonnegative  integer  z  can  be  written  uniquely 
in  the  form 

z  =  a„  k"  +  a„-\  k"~x  +  •  •  ■  +  «i  k  +  a0  where  ay  and  k  are 

integers,  k>2>  0<at  <k  and  an  * 0 •  &' 

The  advantage  that  positional  number  systems  have 

over  others  can  be  appreciated  when  we  do  arithmetical 

calculations  like  adding  23  +  42  =  65.  In  the  Roman 

(nonpositional)  system,  for  example,  we  would  have  to  write: 

XXIII  +  XLII  =  XXIII  +  XXXXII 
=  XXXXXXXIIIII 
=  LXV 

The  proof  of  the  theorem  (2)  depends  on  the 
standard  division  algorithm  which  says  that  if  one  divides  a 
(positive)  integer  t  by  the  nonzero  integer  b  (the  base),  there 
exist  unique  integers  q  (the  quotient)  and  r  (the  remainder) 
where  r  is  nonnegative  and  less  that  the  absolute  value  of  b 
such  that  t  =  bq  +  r. 

Let's  apply  the  division  algorithm  to  the  integer 
113  in  our  decimal  system.  We  write  it  as  113  =  10x11+3. 
When  we  use  -10  as  the  base  we  write  113  =  -10x-ll+3. 
So  we  have  two  different  representations  of  113,  but  each 
integer  must  have  a  unique  representation  as  in  (1),  above. 
The  theorem  (2)  ensures  this  unique  integer  representation 
for  any  number  base  2,  or  greater.  The  theorem  also  excludes 
0  and  1  as  possible  bases,  and  we  see  that  neither  0  nor  1 


make  any  sense  when  substituted  appropriately  into  (1). 

Of  course,  we  could  state  the  theorem  alternatively, 
for  any  base  -2  or  smaller,  but  that  would  not  change  the 
result,  i.e.  the  only  way  to  have  a  unique  representation  for 
each  positive  integer  is  to  permit  either  positive  integers 
or  negative  integers,  but  not  both,  to  be  possible  bases  for  a 
number  system. 

The  importance  of  the  uniqueness  requirement 
becomes  apparent  when  we  consider  how  an  integer  is 
represented  in  a  computer.  Since  a  computer  can  only  "read" 
strings  of  0s  and  1  s,  the  underlying  number  system  of  a 
machine  is  of  base  2.  When  we  represent  decimal  integers 
in  base  2,  we  must  be  certain  that  each  corresponds  to 
exactly  one  base  2  integer,  and  conversely.2 


1 .  For  more  information  on  the  patterns  Dodgson  explored  in  this 
passage,  the  reader  may  find  my  article  "Multiplication  in  Changing 
Bases:  A  Note  on  Lewis  Carroll"  in  Historia  Mathematica  3  ( 1 976), 
183-4,  of  interest. 

2. 1  am  grateful  to  Stan  Lipson  for  illuminating  conversations  on  topics 
discussed  in  this  paper,  and  to  Edward  Wakeling  for  correcting  an 
arithmetic  error  in  an  earlier  version. 


Answer  to  Quiz,  p.7 

C.H.K.  Van  Rooten,  in  his  book  Mots  d'Heures:  Gousses, 
Rames  (pronounced  "Mother  Goose  Rhymes",  Grossman, 
1967)  takes  "Anguish  Languish"  on  step  further  by 
creating  nonsensical  French  verses  which,  when  read 
aloud,  imitate  the  sound  of  English  nursery  rhymes,  in 
this  case  "Humpty  Dumpty  ". 

[Mere  L  'Oie  we  roll  along. . .  ] 


18 


Carrollian 


Notes 


If  I  Hadden  Seen  It,  I  Wooden  Believe  It 

John  Hadden  is  the  talented  creator  of  a  fantastic  series  of 
"Portraits  in  Wood"  or  "biography  boxes".  After  deeply 
studying  his  subject,  he  sculpts  the  individual  symbolic 
pieces  out  of  fine  woods  and  then  carves,  sands,  and/or  paints 
them.  He  may  then  add  wire  or  Fimo  for  special  effects 
(such  as  the  surprise  hidden  behind  Dodgson's  camera). 
Everything  from  the  box  to  the  letters  to  the  objects  is  made 
by  hand,  from  scratch!  His  superb  and  unique  portrait  box 
of  Lewis  Carroll's  life  and  works  (measuring  323A"  x  35'/4" 
x  3")  is  available  for  $7,500.  A  color  postcard  is  enclosed 
with  this  issue.  Write  to  him  at  24A  Longfellow  Avenue, 
Brunswick  ME  04011  or  call  1.207.725.4379. 

Egg-spertise 

An  essay  on  Longfellow  appeared  in  the  "Bookend"  section 
of  The  New  York  Times  Book  Review,  22  October.  Poet/ 
critic  J.D.  McClatchy  wrote:  "And  in  the  wake  of  "The  Song 
of  Hiawatha",  in  1855  -  well,  the  nation  is  still  cluttered 
with  motels  and  steamboats,  summer  camps  and  high 
schools  that  bear  the  name.  It  was  a  poem  imitated  in  French 
by  Baudelaire  and  translated  into  Latin  by  Cardinal 
Newman's  brother.  As  "Hiawatha's  Photographing,"  it  was 
even  quickly  parodied  by  Edward  Lear.  Parody  is  the  last 
form  praise  takes;  Lear  thought  Longfellow  "the  greatest 
living  master  of  language",  but  his  contemporary  sendup 
("From  his  shoulder  Hiawatha  /  Took  the  camera  of 
rosewood,  /  Made  of  sliding,  folding  rosewood;  /  Neatly 
put  it  all  together")  takes  primitivism  into  the  drawing  room 
with  hilarious  consequences." 

[Yes,  and  I  suppose  Lewis  Carroll  wrote  "The  Dong  with 
the  Luminous  Nose".] 

[Sic],  [Sic],  [Sic] 

[The  following  is  a  direct  quotation  from  Klimperei's 
website  http://perso.wanadoo.fr/lapin-gris/alice.  Their 
CD  is  available  for  100FF] 

Klimperei,  a  french  duo  from  Lyon,  has  been  playing  for  a 
long  time  now,  a  kind  of  music  for  children,  warm  and 
unbalanced,  fragile  and  funny:  their  sincerity  and  simplicity 
of  which  can  touch  or  get  on  your  nerves,  it  depends...  A 
bit  like  Eric  Rohmer's  movies.  Herein,  they  come  back  with 
a  special  opus  from  their  repertoire:  for  the  first  time, 
Klimperei  tried  to  follow  a  line,  tacking  about  literary 
references  and  surrealistic  details.  Miniatures  (more  than 
40  numbers  for  70  min  of  music)  of  carved  music,  ambient 


and  even  pop.  A  bit  like  Pascal  Comelade,  and  all  these  self- 
taught  artists  with  serene  thoughts.  A  work  recognized  by 
their  peers  since  the  artwork  is  made  by  Alifie  Benge  who 
is  used  to  illustrate  the  CDs  of  Robert  Wyatt.  Really  dreamt! 
Alice  is  to  the  wonders  what  the  penicillium  is  to  the 
Roquefort.  Wonders  which  punctuate  life  with  amazements, 
little  fears,  obsessions  or  absurdities.  Not  a  marshmallow 
world  where  Manicheism  rules  social  life.  In  this 
wonderland,  queens  are  puzzling  (sometimes  disgusting), 
animals  talk  about  uninteresting  things  (in  the  grown-up 
sense),  and  vicious  circles  settle,  without  modifying  the 
rythm  of  life  though.  Everything  seems  natural,  because 
these  surrealistic  nonsenses  are  not  very  different  from  ours. 
Heads?,  we  cut  some  everyday  in  a  way.  And  this  is  where 
Lewis  Carroll  did  a  mistake:  the  story  of  Alice  is  everything 
but  a  dream.  This  is  what  Klimperei  tries  to  make  us  live 
once  more  through  a  soft  drive  inside  the  text  of  Lewis 
Carroll  and  in  the  Alice's  advenures.  We  are  not  so  far  from 
breaking  through  the  mirror  to  madness.  Klimperei's 
deceptively  simple  tunes  and  musical  arrangements  are  the 
perfect  reflection  of  false  stupidities  of  the  book.  Comic 
half-obsolete  half-flicted  songs,  melancolic  atmospheres 
and  reeks  of  bombast  (beurk...).  Klimperei  suggests  a  true 
concept  siidi,  remaining  humble  and  sincere. 

O  dear,  O  dear 

Since  all  is  well  with  the  Jabberwock  {KL  64,  p.  19),  now 
it's  the  White  Rabbit's  turn  to  be  missing.  Thieves  using 
heavy  equipment  lifted  the  nearly  6-foot  tall,  650-pound 
bronze  statue,  valued  at  more  than  $75,000,  from  its 
foundations  outside  Fiddler's  Green  Amphitheater 
(Englewood,  CO)  last  month.  The  White  Rabbit  was  sculpted 
by  Harry  Marinsky,  81,  and  was  the  first  of  eight  sculptures 
built  around  AW  themes  [KL  52,  p.ll].  Five  other  bronze 
statues  are  on  display  there;  others  are  at  the  Museum  of 
Outdoor  Art  (www.artstozoo.org/moa/moagard.htm). 


"I'm  sorry,  but  all  the  King's  men  aren't 
approved  providers  for  your  HMO." 


19 


d^Sf    JStacBf^    8c  ®PPJf«, 


We're  Off  to  See  the  Gryphon 

An  article,  "Oz  is  Us:  Celebrating  the  Wizard's 
Centennial",  by  John  Updike  in  The  New  Yorker,  September 
25, 2000,  discusses  Martin  Gardner's  "reluctance  to  perform 
an  annotation  to  the  first  Oz  book,  as  he  did  for  Carroll". 
Updike  comments  "It  is  not  hard  to  imagine  why  Gardner 
ducked  the  original  assignment.  The  two  Alice  books  are 
more  literate,  intricate,  and  modernist  than  Baum's 
Wonderful  Wizard,  and  Lewis  Carroll's  mind,  laden  with 
mathematical  lore,  chess  moves,  semantic  puzzles,  and  the 
riddles  of  Victorian  religion,  was  more  susceptible  to 
explication." 

Oz  and  Wonderland,  like  most  siblings,  have 
enjoyed  an  uneasy  relationship  over  the  years.  They  are  often 
mingled  or  confused  (the  Muppets'  adaptation  of  Alice  in 
Wonderland  ended  with  the  characters  singing  "We're  off 
to  see  the  Wizard";  the  comic  book  series  "The  Oz- 
Wonderland  Wars";  the  recent  Jimmy  Zangwow's  Out-of- 
this-world  Moon  Pie  Adventure,  and  so  many  others),  as 
they  both  involve  a  young  girl  traveling  to  odd  and  foreign 
lands.  However,  Baum's  (quite  derivative)  land  is  a  sort  of 
wr-Kansas,  with  the  denizens  being  small  twists  on  her 
family,  friends,  and  pets,  living  a  life  of  stringent  morality. 
Carroll's  whimsy,  amorality  and  irrealis  is  of  a  far  more 
original  and  brilliant  order.  L.Frank  Baum,  the  "Royal 
Historian  of  Oz",  wrote  fourteen  books;  there  are  three  or 
four  times  that  number  in  the  "canon"  today,  written  by  other 
hands. 

Martin  Gardner  has  achieved  quite  a  coup  in  at  last 
reconciling  these  sister  lands.  His  delectable  Visitors  from 
Oz  (St.  Martin's  Press,  1998;  0-312-19353-X)  is  a  fine, 
fun,  adventuresome  tale  for  "children  of  all  ages".  Built 
around  a  frame  story  of  a  movie  producer  (whose  last 
success  was  "Alice  in  Carrolland")  importing  Dorothy  back 
from  Oz  to  New  York  for  publicity  purposes  (he  managed 
to  reach  Glinda  through  the  Internet!),  the  tale  unfolds  both 
in  Oz  and  in  the  "real"  world.  Dorothy  and  her  two 
companions  meet  characters  from  Greek  myth,  Wonderland 
and  Looking-GIass-land,  and  also  genuine  personages  like 
Stephen  Jay  Gould.  An  added  layer  to  the  palimpsest  for 
Gardner's  many  fans  is  to  trace  how  many  of  his  own 
passions  can  be  found  therein:  mathematical  games  and 
puzzles;  puns;  chess  and  cards;  non-Euclidean  geometry; 
skepticism  and  debunking;  Sherlock  Holmes;  multiple 
levels,  self-referentiality  and  frame-breaking  (the  Mad 
Hatter  refers  to  "The  Annotated  Alice  by  the  same  man  who's 
writing  this  Oz  book")  and  so  on.  Well  worth  a  read! 


Soto  Voce 

Reflections  on  Lewis 
Carroll  by  "Various  Hands",  a 
fascinating  chapbook  of  critical 
essays  edited  by  Fernando  J.  Soto 
assisted  by  Dayna  McCausland,  was  published  recently  by 
the  L.C. S.Canada,  and  is  free  to  all  its  members.  Dues  are 
only  cdn$15  in  Canada;  us$13  in  the  States;  and  us$15  for 
international  members.  You  can  buy  the  book  alone  for 
us$12/us$  13 (international)  plus  postage,  but  then  you'd  miss 
out  on  the  joys  of  "White  Rabbit  Tales",  their  worthy  news- 
letter. Write  to  Dayna:  sheer luck@sympatico.ca,  or  Box 
321,  Erin  ON,  NOB  1T0  Canada. 

The  volume  contains  "Carroll's  Easter  Bunny"  by 
John  Docherty,  "Lewis  Carroll  and  the  Law"  by  Peter 
Wesley-Smith,  "Alice's  Adventures  Away  from  Home:  The 
Misunderstanding  of  Life,  Language  and  Culture  in 
Wonderland  and  the  Looking-Glass  World"  by  Monica 
McCarter,  "Framing  the  Dream  Vision  in  the  Alice  Books" 
by  Chris  Pezzarello,  "Two  Important  Logical  Insights  by 
Lewis  Carroll"  by  George  Englebretsen,  "Lewis  Carroll's 
Legal  Snark  and  Gilty  (sic)  Mind:  'The  Barrister's  Dream' 
Interpreted"  by  Fernando  J.  Soto,  and  "Why  Alice  Accepts 
Her  Humble  Position  in  the  Looking-Glass  Chess  Game" 
by  Glen  Downey. 

Lithe  and  Slimy 

Editions  of  TTLG  generally  range  from  the  sublime 
to  the  mundane,  but  an  entirely  new  category  of  "fescinnine 
pudendous  sludge"  must  be  created  for  the  bottom-feeding, 
dolorific  effrontery  of  the  "Creation  Classic  Portable" 
paperback  edition  by  Creation  Books  of  the  U.K.  (1-84068- 
021-0,  $11,  £7).  The  caprylic  perversities  of  the  babblative 
introducer,  a  fastuous  and  egolatrous  flaneur  called  Jeremy 
Reed,  spill  over  into  his  filipendulous  and  discrutiating 
foreword,  seeing  Dodgson  only  in  cacodoxial  terms  of 
wholly  imagined  sexual  obsessions,  and  the  work  itself  as 
"a  covert  paean  to  hallucinogenic  drug  abuse"  with  Reed's 
only  "scholarship"  being  mucid  references  to  the  carminative 
lyrics  of  brummagem  English  pop  groups  of  the  1960s  and 
beyond.  Ah,  but  the  insolence  doesn't  stop  there.  Trevor 
Brown's  maltalented  and  anapologetical  exspuitation  on  the 
cover  portrays  a  tutmouthed,  concupiscible  Alice  with  legs 
akimbo  and  unsuitable  underwear  on  exhibitionistic  display. 
A  stegnotic  would  be  in  order.  Shame  on  them. 


20 


from  Oar  rar-pan^ 


Books 

Broadview  Literary  Texts  have  pro- 
duced a  superb  and  inexpensive 
scholarly  edition  of  AW,  under  the 
editorship  of  Richard  Kelly.  The  series 
"presents  the  text  together  with  a 
variety  of  documents  from  the  period, 
giving  readers  a  rich  sense  of  the  world 
from  which  [they]  emerged."  It 
includes  an  introductory  essay,  a 
chronology,  the  full  texts  of  A  W,  Alice 's 
Adventures  under  Ground,  The 
Nursery  Alice,  and  "Alice  on  the 
Stage",  excerpts  from  Symbolic  Logic 
and  his  diaries  and  letters,  the  difficult- 
to-find  "Alice's  Recollection  of 
Carrollian  Days"  from  The  Cornhill 
Magazine  (1932),  contemporary 
reviews,  photographs,  and  excerpts 
from  other  children's  literature  of  the 
time,  www.broadviewpress.com;  1- 
55111-223-X,  $10  in  paperback. 

The  Artful  Dodger:  Images  and 
Reflections  reflects  on  the  career  of 
author/illustrator  Nick  Bantock,  with 
insights  into  his  editions  of 
"Jabberwocky"  and  "The  Walrus  and  the 
Carpenter".  $40  hardcover  from 
Chronicle  Books  (0811827526)  or  as 
a  2001  Engagement  Calendar 
(0811827003)  for  $15. 

Sci-fi  "Hugo"  Nominees,  1999,  ed. 
Rhias  K.  Hall,  Alexandria  Digital 
Literature,  $25  (0-7420-0625-5) 
includes  "Hunting  the  Snark"  by  Mike 
Resnick. 

Taking  my  Cue  from  the  Walrus  by 
Bonnie  Gartstone,  Small  Poetry  Press, 
Box  5342,  Concord  CA  94524. 

Jimmy  Zangwow's  Out-of-this-world 
Moon  Pie  Adventure  by  Tony  DiTerlizzi 
(grades  1-4)  mixes  Alician  and  Ozian 
characters.  From  Simon  &  Schuster 
0689822154.  $16. 

Alice  in  a  Miniaturebook  (2lA  inches 
square),  a  radically  abridged  A  W/TTLG 
(in  English)  illustrated  by  Nakajima 
Youichi  and  Okamoto  Naoko  from 
Annie's  Coloring  Studio  in  Japan,  is  for 
sale  by  the  L.C.S.  (U.K.).  The  book 


Correspondents 


costs  £12  or  $20,  post  free.  They  can 
accept  cheques  made  payable  to  'The 
Lewis  Carroll  Society',  drawn  in 
sterling  on  a  U.K.  bank,  or  checks  in 
U.S.  dollars  drawn  on  a  U.S.  bank.  Alan 
White,  69  Cromwell  Road,  Hertford, 
Herts.,  SG13  7DP,  U.K.  01992 
584530  or  alanwhite@tesco.net. 

Alices  Pop-Up  Wonderland  (Macmil- 
lan  Children's  Books,  £15)  .  "A  pop- 
up carousel  features  the  six  scenes  with 
more  than  30  press-out  figures.  There 
are  lots  of  surprises  behind  the  flaps 
and  pull-out  tabs,  plus  a  mini-board 
game  of  the  Queen's  croquet  match." 
A  review  in  the  Daily  Mail  (London) 
says  "...The  book  announces  itself  as 
by  Nick  Denchfield  and  Alex  Vining, 
though  by  inspecting  the  back  cover 
under  a  powerful  microscope  it  is  also 
possible  to  pick  out  the  names  of  Lewis 
Carroll  and  John  Tenniel.  Perhaps  they 
would  prefer  it  so.  The  illustrations  are 
all  based  on  Tenniel  (as  the  text  is  on 
Carroll)  though  in  a  rather  fuzzy  and 
anaemic  fashion."  0333901134. 

"Charming  Classics"  (HarperCollins) 
AW  with  a  small  "gold"  White  Rabbit 
charm  on  a  chain,  $6.  0-694-0145400. 

Signet  Classic's  AW/TTLG  with  an 
introduction  by  Martin  Gardner,  has 
been  reissued  as  a  mass  market 
paperback  ($4,  0451527747). 

A  poster  enclosed  with  the  book 
reveals  that  Jassen  Ghiuselev's 
absolutely  superb  set  of  sepia 
monochrome  illustrations  to  Alice  im 
Wunderland  (retold  by  Barbara 
Frischmuth),  are  in  fact  pieces  of  a 
larger  work,  a  true  artistic  tour-de- 
force. Afbau-Verlag,  Berlin,  2000;  3- 
351-04003-2. 

Donald  Knuth  has  published  "Biblical 
Ladders"  in  The  Mathemagician  and 
Pied  Puzzler  :  A  Collection  in  Tribute 
to  Martin  Gardner,  edited  by  E. 
Berlekamp  and  T  Rodgers,  A.K.  Peters, 

21 


1999.  "Biblical  Ladders"  is  a  version 
of  Carroll's  "Doublets";  Knuth  is  the 
Stanford  premier  computer  scientist; 
Berlecamp  is  the  Berkeley  mathe- 
matician famous  for  his  books  on  Go. 
$34;  156881075X. 

Lynne  Truss'  novel  Tennyson's  Gift 
(1996:  Penguin,  U.K.,  0241135214), 
about  the  "Freshwater  Circle" 
(Tennyson  and  Julia  Margaret  Cameron 
had  nearby  cottages  on  the  Isle  of 
Wight)  and  their  invited  luminaries 
such  as  G.  F.  Watts,  his  wife  Ellen 
Terry,  and  CLD,  has  been  translated  into 
French  by  Hugues  Lebailly. 

The  naming  of  The  White  Queen  s 
Dictionary  of  One-Letter  Words  (with 
over  seven  hundred  entries!)  was 
inspired  by  her  majesty's  "And  I'll  tell 
you  a  secret  —  I  can  read  words  of  one 
letter!  Isn't  that  grand!?"  in  TTLG.  You 
can  see  a  sample  and  order  it  from 
http://blueray.com/dictionary/ 
oneletter;  pivotal@pobox.com;  $11  + 
p&h  from  Pivotal,  Inc.,  307  Dumont 
Drive,  Hillsborough,  NC  27278. 

Alice  Falling,  the  first  novel  by 
William  Wall,  W.  W.  Norton  & 
Company,  is  a  loathsome  exercise 
about  an  affluent  group  of  friends 
whose  boredom  and  despair  combust 
into  tragedy.  Although  inspired  by  the 
first  scene  of  the  Alice  books,  it  is  a 
thoroughly  depressing  modernist 
reading. 

Two  of  Totem  Books'  "Introducing" 
series  use  Alician  imagery  on  their 
covers:  Introducing  the  Universe  and 
Introducing  Mathematics. 

Performances  Noted 

Alice  in  Bed,  a  play  written  by  Susan 
Sontag  in  1992,  had  its  New  York 
premier  in  November.  "The  play  is  ? 
free  fantasy  based  on  some  elementary 
givens  of  this  life,  braided  with  imagery 
from  AW-  the  most  famous  Alice  of 
the  19th  century  -  to  evoke  completely 
contemporary  themes."  The  title 
character  is  Alice  James,  the  brilliant, 
depressed  sister  of  the  novelist  Henry 


James  and  the  psychologist  William 
James,  and  the  Wonderland  references 
include  a  tea  party. 

Alice  in  Modernland  by  Kirsten  Nash 
at  the  Sledgehammer  Theatre,  San 
Diego  CA,  October/November.  In  this 
adult  fairy  tale,  Alice  tries  to  break  into 
the  music  industry. 

TTLG  adapted  by  Eric  Schmiedl, 
Cleveland  (OH)  Play  House  children's 
theater  in  late  November. 
Awards 

Santoro  Graphics  in  London  has  been 
honored  at  the  Greetings  Card 
Association  International  Card  of  the 
year  contest  for  the  third  year  running. 
Their  A  W  "depth  card"  was  awarded  this 
year's  International  Louie  Award  for  its 
entry  in  the  blank/non-occasion 
category.  [Does  an  un-birthday 
qualify  for  a  "non-occasion"?]  The 
awards,  begun  in  1988,  were  named 
after  the  father  of  American  greetings, 
Louis  Prang.  "Depth  Cards  are  just  one 
of  a  range  of  greetings  which  include 
swing  cards,  bang  on  the  door  and  flux 
deluxe." 

The  annual  "Diagram  Group  Prize" 
nominations  by  readers  of  The 
Bookseller  magazine  for  the  oddest 
title  of  the  year  include  Psoriasis  at 
Your  Fingertips,  Woodcarving  with  a 
Chainsaw,  Whose  Bottom?  A  Lift-the- 
Flap  Book,  and  Did  Lewis  Carroll  Visit 
Llandudno? 

Places  and  Events 

"Alice's  Wicked  Wonderland  Tour" 
publicized  the  release  of  the  horrific 
and  violent  video  game  by  Electronic 
Arts  (see  KL  64,  p.  22  or  www.alice. 
ea.com)  at  the  Sound  Factory  dance 
club  in  San  Francisco  on  26  October 
(and  other  venues)  with  a  multimedia 
"rave"  featuring  Goth  game  designer 
American  McGee,  a  circus  troupe, 
"house  music",  AW  fractal  videos,  and 
so  forth.  Natalie  Portman,  19,  (Queen 
Amidala  in  "Star  Wars")  has  been  lined 
up  to  play  Alice  in  the  just-announced 
film  version,   to  be   directed  by 
"Scream"  and  "Nightmare  on  Elm 
Street"  director  Wes  Craven.  Eeek! 

The  Mad  Hatter's  14th  Annual  Tea 
Party  will  take  place  February  23-25, 
2001  in  Portland,  Maine.  It's  all  about 


tattooing.  See  http://members.aol.com/ 
RobFAM  1 0/Madhatters.html. 

The  Cheshire  Cat  Brewpub,  housed  in 
a  restored  Victorian  mansion  built  in 
1891,  opened  its  doors  at  7803  Ral- 
ston Road  in  Denver  CO. 


A  life-size  painted  fiberglass  cow 
depicting  scenes  from  AW  by  mural 
artist  Debbi  Unger  is  part  of  a  four- 
month  exhibition  called  "WACOWS", 
benefiting  The  Art  Center  in  Waco,  TX. 
The  WACOWS  were  publicly  auctioned 
December  9Ih  through  live  and  Internet 
venues,  www.wacows.com/wonderauc. 
html. 

Beverly  Wallace's  series  of  collo- 
graphic  prints  of  "Jabberwocky"  was 
the  subject  of  a  one  person  exhibit  at 
the  Hutchiuns  Gallery  of  Long  Island 
University. 

"The  Art  of  Grace  Slick"  at  Artrock  in 
San  Francisco  Nov/Dec  featured 
acrylic  paintings  (an  acid-based 
medium),  including  an  AW  with 
Timothy  Leary  as  the  Hatter,  Lennon  / 
McCartney  as  the  Bros.  Tweedle  and 
so  on. 

Alice's  Shop  in  Oxford  is  currently 
working  to  establish  an  A  W  Gallery  and 
Tearoom  two  doors  from  the  shop, 
which  will  be  on  the  ground  floor  of  a 
building  on  the  corner  of  Rose  Place 
and  St.  Aldates,  directly  opposite  the 
gates  of  the  Christ  Church  memorial 
gardens.  They  have  put  out  a  call  for 
artists  and  craftspeople  to  submit  work 
based  on  an  Alician  theme  for 
exhibition  and  sale  through  the  Alice's 
Shop  Gallery.  They  are  interested  in  all 
media,  including  paintings,  prints, 
ceramics,  pottery,  sculpture,  jewelry 
and  so  forth.  Contact  Luke  Gander. 
alice@sheepshop.com;  www.sheep 
shop.com;  83  St.  Aldates,  Oxford,  OX1 
IRA,  U.K.;  01865  723793;  -726752 
fax. 

Academia 

Dr.  Sandor  Burstein  inaugurated  a 
series  of  "Peer  Presentations"  by 
speaking  on  "Down  the  Rabbit  Hole 
with  Alice:  Into  the  Mind  and  Books 
of  Lewis  Carroll"  at  the  Fromm 
Institute  in  San  Francisco,  25 
September. 


Professor  Francine  Abeles  of  Kean 
University,  speaking  on  "LC's  4Game' 
of  Voting",  considers  CLD  "a  voting 
theorist  second  only  to  the  great 
eighteenth  century  social  scientist  and 
philosopher,  the  Marquis  de  Con- 
dorcet".  November  9  at  Adelphi  Uni- 
versity in  Garden  City  NY. 

The  doctoral  dissertation  of  Martina 
Paatela-Nieminen,  Lic.Art,  entitled 
"On  the  Threshold  of  Intercultural 
Alices:  Intertextual  research  on  the 
illustrations  of  the  English  Alice  in 
Wonderland  and  the  German  Alice  im 
Wunderland  with  respect  to  inter- 
media research  in  the  field  of  art 
education",  has  been  published  by  the 
University  of  Art  and  Design  Helsinki 
as  a  CD-ROM.  Contact  mpaatela 
@uiah.fi.  Orders:  books@uiah.fi. 
+358  9  7563  0319;  www.uiah.fi. 

Auctions 

Illustration  House  (New  York),  4 
November,  had  the  original  art  by  Frank 
Adams  of  "Alice  and  the  Rabbit"  from 
Stories  Old  and  New. 

With  nearly  2000  items  by  and  about 
Lewis  Carroll,  the  Hilda  Bohem 
collection  is  now  being  sold  as  a  unit 
through  Needham  Book  Finders  for 
$150,000.  Contact  Stanley  Kurman, 
Needham  Book  Finders,  PO  Box  3067, 
Santa  Monica,  CA  90408;  310.395. 
0538;  kurmania@aol.com. 

Movies  and  Television 

The  1999  British  live-action  television 
film  "Alice  Through  the  Looking- 
Glass",  directed  by  John  Henderson 
and  featuring  Ian  Holm,  Ian  Richardson, 
and  Sian  Phillips  was  broadcast  several 
times  on  HBO-Family  throughout 
October.  The  movie  includes  the  "Wasp 
in  a  Wig"  chapter. 

According  to  an  interview  in  Parade, 
22  October,  actress  Lucy  Liu  ("Ally 
McBeal",  "Charlie's  Angels")  got  her 
start  in  acting  in  an  AW  production  at 
University  of  Michigan,  where  she  had 
the  title  role. 

In  "The  Sight",  a  1999  serial-murder 
mystery  movie  made  for  television  and 
known  in  the  U.K.  as  "Shadows",  a 
young  American  architect  is  sent  to 
Britain  to  refurbish  an  old  London 
hotel  and  finds  himself  exposed  to  a 


22 


chain  of  unusual  events,  strange 
visions,  ghosts  and  frightening  dreams. 
CLD  and  a  girl  named  Alice  both  make 
appearances. 

Online 

An  admirable  website,  thoughtfully  and 
engagingly  designed  and  full  of 
fascinating  specialties  including 
perhaps  the  most  comprehensive  over- 
view yet  of  the  various  films  and 
television  adaptations,  is  the  brainchild 
of  Larry  Hall.  Other  'goodies'  include 
a  feature  on  the  Alice  shop  in  Oxford, 
a  Dodgson-inspired  'jukebox',  a  tour 
around  the  'Curious  Labyrinth' 
attraction  in  Disneyland  Paris,  and  an 
AW  adaptation  which  combines  the 
Tenniel  illustrations  with  a  real-life 
Alice  (his  five-year-old  grand-daughter 
Annie  Louise),  www.alice-in-wonder 
land.fsnet.co.uk. 

Ottawa  based  BetweenCovers.com 
debuted  its  new  name,  KidZlibrary. 
com,  its  new  look  and  first  free 
content:  the  complete  AW  (four  hours 
long),  read  by  Peter  Cochrane, 
illustrated  by  Ryan  MacKeen,  and 
making  use  of  the  RealPlayer  engine. 

Lenny  de  Rooy,  a  21 -year  old  Dutch 
woman,  has  established  a  welcoming 
website  for  students  at  www.student. 
kun.nl/l.derooy/. 

The  L.C.S.  (U.K.)  website  now  contains 
the  full  table  of  contents  and  keyword 
search  for  all  issues  of  Jabberwocky 
(its  journal  before  it  became  The 
Carrolliari).  http://aznet.co.uk/lcs/ 
jabberwocky. 

Salon.com's  "Virtual  Reading  Group" 
(http://tabletalk.salon.com)  discussed 
AWmd  TTLG  in  September,  2000. 

Programmers  are  a  playful  lot,  and  have 
been  known  to  insert  hidden  goodies 
known  as  "Easter  Eggs"  in  the  operating 
systems  and  applications  they  have 
engineered.  Clicking  the  right 
combination  of  keys  can  produce 
hidden  video  games  in  Microsoft 
Word,  and  so  on.  One  of  them  is  called 
the  "Mad  Hatter  screensaver",  which 
changes  the  popular  "pipes" 
screensaver  (for  Windows  and  NT), 
periodically  making  one  of  the  joints 
into  a  teapot.  See  www.cnet.com  and 
type  in  "Easter  Eggs"  in  the  Search 
window. 


A  list  of  Carroll's  appearances  on 
postage  stamps,  as  well  as  many 
fascinating  recreational  math  and  chess 
problems  and  puzzles  are  found  at 
Mario  Velucci's  website  http:// 
anduin.eldar.org/~problemi/brain.html. 

Cecil  Adams'  ("The  Straight  Dope") 
article  refuting  Richard  Wallace 
contention  that  Dodgson  was  Jack  the 
Ripper  can  be  found  at  http://www. 
straightdope.com/classics/a970307a. 
html. 

An  excellent  tribute  page  to  actress 
Kathryn  Beaumont,  the  voice  of 
Disney's  Alice,  at  http://www.don 
brockway.com/kb.htm. 

Some  basic  information  about  Dennis 
Potter's  1965  ur-Dreamchild  teleplay 
Alice  can  be  found  at  www.ucrysj.ac.uk/ 
potter/alice.htm. 

A  list  of  "Musical  Compositions 
Inspired  by  Lewis  Carroll"  can  be  found 
at  Markus  Lang's  site  www.helsinki.fi/ 
-mlang/carroll-music.html,  which 
points  also  to  his  Carroll  biography  in 
Finnish. 

Photographs  of  absolutely  marvelous 
sand  sculptures  at  http://www.sand 
scapes.com/archive/FairyTales/ 
FairyTales.htm. 

The  Tony  Sarg  Mad  Hatter  marionette 
(c.  1920)  is  visible  at  www.  puppet.org/ 
strange.html#MadHatter.  Some  images 
of  Bill  Baird's  Alice  puppets  (1974)  at 
http://home.att.net/~mbaroto/bbalice. 
htm. 

An  essay  by  amateur  astronomer  Hans 
Havermann  showing  the  night  sky  on 
Alice  Liddell's  birthday  believes  that 
the  Cheshire  Cat  may  have  been  a 
metaphor  for  the  moon.  http://mem 
bers.home.net/hahaj/cheshire.html. 

Articles 

"Tn  the  Midst  of  his  Laughter  and 
Glee':  Nonsense  and  Nothingness  in 
Lewis  Carroll"  by  Elizabeth  Sewell  in 
Soundings:  An  Interdisciplinary 
Journal,  Vol.  LXXXII,  No.  3-4,  Fall/ 
Winter  '99  (actually,  it  was  published 
in  November  '00).  (Soundings  is  the 
new  title  of  The  Christian  Scholar  and 
not  the  boating  magazine.)  Reprints  of 
this  superb  and  important  study  by  the 
premier  nonsense  scholar  are  available 
from  SVHE,  633  SW  Montgomery  St., 

23 


Portland  OR  97201;  503.721.6520;  ~3 
fax;  svhe@unidial.com. 

The  British  Gentleman  s  Quarterly  for 
December  2000  contains  "Malice  in 
Wonderland",  twelve  pages  of  photo- 
graphs of  celebrities  dressed  in  Alician 
costumes  having  a  tea  party  and 
generally  misbehaving.  Supermodel 
Kate  Moss  is  the  White  Rabbit,  Jade 
Jagger  the  Cheshire  Cat,  Elizabeth 
Jagger  is  Alice,  Anita  Pallenberg  is  the 
Queen  of  Hearts,  and  so  on.  The 
pictures  were  taken  by  "society  fixture 
and  photographer"  Dan  Macmillan. 

"Language  Heads  Down  the  Rabbit 
Hole"  by  John  Schwartz  in  the  New  York 
Times  "Week  in  Review"  section,  20 
December,  refers  to  Tom  Stoppard, 
Carroll,  and  so  on. 

"Lewis  Carroll  -  mathematician  and 
teacher  of  children"  by  Canon  D.  B. 
Eperson  in  The  Mathematical  Gazette 
Volume  84  Number  499,  March  2000. 
It  can  be  downloaded  in  .pdf  format  at 
http://www.m-a.org.uk/eb/mg/mg084a. 
htm. 

The  October  edition  of  PC  Gaming 
World  was  accompanied  by  a  free  CD- 
ROM  containing  a  four  minute  preview 
of  American  McGee's  Alice.  A  review 
of  the  pathologically  violent  game  can 
be  seen  in  "Down  a  Rabbit  Hole  to  a 
Dark  Wonderland"  by  Charles  Herold, 
The  New  York  Times,  2 1  December. 

Things 

The  first  "Limited  Edition  Sericel"  of 
"Disney  Leading  Ladies"  contains 
photographs  and  signatures  of  the 
actresses  who  were  the  voices  of 
Cinderella  (Eileen  Woods),  Sleeping 
Beauty  (Mary  Costa),  and  Alice 
(Kathryn  Beaumont)  along  with 
drawings  of  the  characters.  Edition  of 
1,500.  $475. 

Actress  Sally  Fields  reads  an 
abridgment  of  AW  on  audio  cassette 
(0671581120)  or  CD  (0743506413). 
From  Simon  &  Schuster.  $20. 

Nintendo's  "Game  Boy  Color"  game 
based  on  Disney's  AW  was  released  in 
September. 

Herbert  Bauman's  1925  composition 
of  AW  ballet  music  has  been  recorded 
by  the  Radio-Philharmonie  Hannover 
des  NDR  and  released  on  CD  by  Thoro- 


fon  (CTH  2360),  with  a  booklet  in 
English  and  French. 
Grynne,  a  band  from  Reno,  has 
recorded  "Pictures  &  Conversations" 
on  the  In  Stead  Music  label;  described 
as  a  "musical  accompaniment"  to  a 
retelling  of  A  W.  In  MP3  DAT  format 
from  http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/ 
165/grynne.html  or  conventional  CD 
format  from  P.O.  Box  60254,  Reno 
NV  89506. 

A  new  line  of  hand-painted  resin  tree 
ornaments  based  on  the  "AW Ten  Pins" 
figures;  $15  each  from  the  Metro- 
politan Museum  of  Art  store;  800. 
468.7386;  www.metmuseum.org/ 
store. 

An  AW  Magic  Mug  -  the  full  Tenniel 
illo,  not  the  common  abbreviated 
headshot  -  $13  from  The  Unemployed 
Philosophers  Guild,  61  Pearl  St  Suite 
508,  Brooklyn,  NY  11201;  718.243. 
9492  or  800.255.8371;  hegelian  @aol. 
com;  www.philosophers  guild,  com. 
They  also  carry  "Freudian  slippers"  and 
a  host  of  other  wackiness. 


According  to  the  instruction  manual  for 
The  Dragon  NaturallySpeaking  Mobile 
Organizer  (a  voice-to-text  program),  to 
separate  items  one  should  either  stop 
recording  between  them  or  say  the 
word  "Jabberwocky". 
Quotablemagnets  with  the  Queen's 
dialog  about  impossible  things,  from 
quotablecards,  611  Broadway  Suite 
810,  New  York  NY  10012,  212.420. 
7552  or  -8  fax. 

Cement  Alice  garden  statue  (25  !4" 
high)  from  Gumps,  $100;  800.284. 
8677;  www.gumps.com. 
Muriel  Ratcliffe  at  the  Alice  in 
Wonderland  Centre  in  Llandudno  has 
available  an  interactive  AW  CD-ROM 
by  Joriko.  "It  is  a  full  feature  length  CD 
(Windows  compatible)  which  includes 
12  interactive  puzzles  and  games, 
beautifully  presented  in  wonderful 
colour  graphics,  and  narrated  by  Simon 
Callow.  It  retails  at  £25  or  us$40  (10% 
discount    for    LCS    and    LCSNA 
members),  www.wonderland.co.uk;  3  & 


4  Trinity  Square,  Llandudno,  North 
Wales,  UK.  [Or  directly  from  www. 
joriko.  com] 

Jan  Svankmajer's  Alice  is  now  on  DVD. 
Unfortunately,  it  does  not  include  his 
short  1971  film  of  "Jabberwocky" 
(Zvahlav  aneb  Saticky  Slameneho 
Hubert  a). 

The  current  run  of  the  DC  Comics 
comic  book  The  Flash  has  a  continuing 
story  where  he  goes  into  a  looking- 
glass   universe.   It's   not   Alice's 
wonderland,  but  the  writer  says  that  he 
used  the  books  as  a  template. 
Handpainted  porcelain  boxes  of 
Disney  AW  characters  from  the  PHB 
collection  by  Midwest  of  Cannon  Falls 
$25  each.  The  Paragon  Catalog: 
800.657.3934;  www.paragongifts.com. 
Dave  Kellum,  now  halfway  through  his 
marvelous  series  of  twelve  Tenniel- 
based  clay  sculptures  (AX  64,  p.23) 
most  of  which  also  function  as  lamps, 
has  changed  his  home  page  to  http:// 
davekellum.com. 


Alice  in  transformation  to  Humpty  Dumpty 
Fat  Alice,  1973 


Study  of  Disney's  Cheshire  Cat 
Scientific  Alician,  February  1980 


Father  William  and  Son 
Alitji  in  the  Dreamtime,  1975 


Ue  front  cover  coCCaqe  digpCays  tke  astonishing  variety  of  BV'OH 
SeweeeS  teeustratioHS.  AM  Inaaes  copyrigM  ©2000  6y  Bwoh  SmeCS. 


Welsh  Jabberwockarus 
Scientific  Alician,  October  1981 


Frog  Footman 
The  Annotated  Alice  in  Nurseryland,  2000 


The  Pool  of  Tears 

An,  Sun-Hee's  Adventures  Under  the 

Land  of  the  Morning  Calm,  1990 


u-    •        ffc^Vc  *™>  Hue  to  Fran  Abeles  Gary  Brockman,  Llisa  Demetrios  Burstein,  Sandor 
tunes  a  yedianu  membership  dues  are  U.S.  $20  (regular)  ana 

kir^H£p£^si» *- «-  -  -  - — *  b°*  **  miu  va,,ey 

TA  94942  or  preferably,  by  e-mail,  below. 

Pres Lent ^phanie  Lovett  StephStoff@aol.com  Secretary:  Cindy  Watter,  hedgehog@napanet.net 

V.P  and  Editor:  Mark  Burstein,  wrabbit@worldpassage.net 
The  Lewis  Carroll  Society  of  North  America  Home  Page:  www.lewiscarroll.org 


24
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